We live in tough times. Budgets are being slashed in households, cities, states, and our nation. Show me someone who hasn’t been impacted or had someone close to them impacted and I’ll show you a hermit with a billion bucks stuffed under his mattress.
With congress coming to terms at the last moment, the debt ceiling has been raised, but another $2.4 trillion of cuts are to be made over the next 10 years. $2.4 trillion seems like a lot, but it’s nothing that a nation of volunteers can’t make up for.
Let’s do the math:
$2,400,000,000,000 of cuts / 300 million Americans = $8,000 of cuts / person
Sam Richards Sam Richards is a sociologist and teacher of the largest race relations course in the US. He argues that empathy is the core of sociology.Full bio here.
Since I’ve started to think about and research TOMS my stance has been best summed up as such: the problem isn’t shoelessness; it’s poverty.
At the best TOMS is addressing a symptom of poverty, not poverty itself. At the worst, TOMS is exploiting those living in poverty to sell shoes and hindering the local shoe business of their giving locations by giving away free shoes.
The author of the piece, Patrick McDonald, even gave me the last word on TOMS in the piece:
“You see the impact of how a job can change lives,” says Timmerman, “of how it can give a person dignity.”
“Hello,” the heavily-accented voice on the line said, “this is T-Rex. How can I be of service to you today?”
I was calling about a credit card or maybe my website. I can’t remember for sure, but I needed help and had to place the dreaded call to customer service.
“T-Rex? Your name is T-Rex?”
“Yes, sir, like the dinosaur in Jurassic Park!”
I’m glad he clarified that because I might have thought he was referring to the British band and that would just be weird.
Have you ever noticed that the names of fireworks are a little too dildo-like?
I just flipped through an online catalog of fireworks and found the following firework names: Aerial Avalanche, Burst and Bloom, Untamed Retribution, Bada Bing Bada Boom, Komodo 3000, Phantomizer, Bone Breaker, White Knight, Midnight Monsoon.
And the list goes on, but I should probably stop before Annie hollers up and asks what I’m doing. “Oh I’m just trying to find fireworks which have names that sound like dildos. (I’m thankful this is the first time this has ever occurred to me…but is the plural dildos or dildoes?)…
(You can get the graphic above – Map Marker of Death – on a T-shirt here)
It took a little while to realize I might get shot. If I was, I vowed to write a message in blood to my wife revealing the identity of my killer. With a blood stained finger, I’d scrawl: Google Maps.
I was in Beverly Hills at a speaking engagement and needed to get back to my hotel near LAX. I had tried to rent a car with no success, so I was traveling by bus. I was using Google Maps on my iPhone to navigate L.A.’s bus system.
I love being married to my wife. And I’m happy for those in New York who will now be able to tie-the-knot. Although, I wouldn’t be surprised if the bill is overturned within the next 12 months by a state constitutional amendment. However, I’m confident that in my lifetime gay men and women across the country will have the right to marry just like the rest of us.
You might disagree with my view on this. Maybe you feel so strongly against gay marriage that you have one of those anti-gay marriage bumper stickers, or you don’t feel the need to examine the issue any further than, “It’s Adam and Eve! Not Adam and Steve!!” Maybe it’s…
Did you see Jon Stewart on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace? He was pissed. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen him not funny for that long.
“The embarrassment is that I’m given credibility in this world because of the disappointment that the public has in what the news media does,” Stewart said.
“I don’t think our viewers are the least bit disappointed with us,” Wallace said. “I think our viewers think, finally, they’re getting somebody who tells the other side of the story.”
“Who are the most consistently misinformed media viewers?” Stewart shot back, his voice rising. “The most consistently misinformed? Fox, Fox viewers, consistently, every poll.”
Tom Hanks gave the commencement speech at Yale this year. He shared some interesting thoughts on Faith & Fear.
Since Saving Private Ryan he’s become a bit of a history buff, and I appreciate the fact he takes a longer view on current events. We’re in a rough patch and, unless you are graduate from Yale, you might’ve noticed it’s not easy finding a job these days.
The talking heads on TV spout the latest fears at us (America is done, move to China, the earth is toast, buy gold because when the economy collapses and no one has anything to eat or drink it will be worth a lot!!!!) or they are spouting off, red-faced about Weiner-Gate. (By the way I’m totally against the…
“I believe we just build a wall at the border and tell the world (whistles and flips off the world).”
– Stephen Colbert in an interview with Tea Party Express founder Amy Kremer
Jon Stewart will call out his guests and argue with them somewhat respectfully. But Stephen Colbert will totally eviscerate a guest by agreeing with their stance more than any other person in the world ever has…ever. And in doing so, Ms. Kremer’s position was left in a puddle of stupitude along with the failed presidential run of Donald Trump.
You should watch the whole interview (below), but the moment quoted above was by far my favorite and the scariest….
