Robert H Schuller, the preacher whose "Hour of Power" once attracted millions of TV viewers and turned him into one of America's first superstar televangelists, has been forced out of the church he founded, which has fallen deep into debt and is being torn apart by a simmering family dispute.
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This is the age of corporatized politics. That means we may admire our leaders, but we can't depend on them. We're paying the price for Thomas Jefferson's unfulfilled desire to "crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country."
Michele Bachmann kicked off her presidential campaign on Monday in Waterloo, Iowa, and in one interview surrounding the official event she promised to mimic the spirit of Waterloo's own John Wayne.
The only problem, as one eagle-eyed reader notes: Waterloo's John Wayne was not the beloved movie star, but rather
The artist Ai Weiwei made a brief statement to reporters outside his home on Thursday in Beijing.
It is too soon to tell what kind of restrictions Mr. Ai might face on his ability to work, socialize or communicate with the outside world. Any impulse to speak out might also be tempered by the knowledge that three of his associates — a designer, an accountant and one of his assistants — remain in detention as part of the financial inquiry that his family says his groundless.
Even as they celebrated his release on Thursday, some human rights advocates said they feared the government might have successfully muzzled one of the nation’s most renownedvoices of conscience.
“A political power can easily silence an individual,” said Pu Zhiqiang, a rights lawyer in Beijing. “But in doing so, it also shows its fear and lack of confidence. And it also shows to the world the failings of China’s legal system.”
5 of 5 
[LINK: Creating Culture ]
"Every female associate and every customer can feel even better about the company as a result of today’s decision."UPDATED Walmart Statements Regarding Supreme Court Ruling in Dukes Case
“Clearly today’s ruling in the Dukes case has important legal implications but just as important, it pulls the rug out from under the accusations made against Walmart over the last 10 years. Every female associate and every customer can feel even better about the company as a result of today’s decision.
"Walmart has a long history of providing advancement opportunities for our female associates and over the years we have made tremendous strides in developing women throughout the organization. In fact, we have created specific training and mentoring programs to help prepare women for opportunities at all levels in our company. As a result of our efforts, Walmart is often recognized as a great place for women to work.”
--Gisel Ruiz, Executive Vice President, People, Walmart U.S.
"This act represents many years of effort… to call attention to the unconscionable practice of paying female employees less wages than male employees for the same job. This measure adds to our laws another structure basic to democracy. It will add protection at the working place to the women, the same rights at the working place in a sense that they have enjoyed at the polling place."
- President John F. Kennedy, remarks upon signing the Equal Pay Act of 1963
On this day in 1963, President John F. Kennedy signed into law the Equal Pay Act, a law intended to end gender-based pay discrimination. At the time, women were earning, on average, only 59 cents for every dollar earned, on average, by men. Companies were posting the same jobs on men's and women's help wanted pages -- with different salaries. Discrimination was rampant and overt; it was still legal to pay unfairly. The Equal Pay Act was intended to be a key first step toward changing the way America did business, for the better.
Ranking | Country | HPI-2 | Probability at birth of not surviving to age 60 (%) | People lacking functional literacy skills (%) | Long-term unemployment (%) | Population below 50% of median income (%) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Sweden | 6.3 | 6.7 | 7.5 | 1.1 | 6.5 |
| 2 | Norway | 6.8 | 7.9 | 7.9 | 0.5 | 6.4 |
| 3 | Netherlands | 8.1 | 8.3 | 10.5 | 1.8 | 7.3 |
| 4 | Finland | 8.1 | 9.4 | 10.4 | 1.8 | 5.4 |
| 5 | Denmark | 8.2 | 10.3 | 9.6 | 0.8 | 5.6 |
| 6 | Germany | 10.3 | 8.6 | 14.4 | 5.8 | 8.4 |
| 7 | Switzerland | 10.7 | 7.2 | 15.9 | 1.5 | 7.6 |
| 8 | Canada | 10.9 | 8.1 | 14.6 | 0.5 | 11.4 |
| 9 | Luxembourg | 11.1 | 9.2 | - | 1.2 | 6.0 |
| 10 | Austria | 11.1 | 8.8 | - | 1.3 | 7.7 |
| 11 | France | 11.2 | 8.9 |
Lady loves to live
By Bridget Bell, Sep 21, 2009
where other people lived, acquires pillowcases
where other faces drooled, slurps broth off thrift store spoons
formerly cradled in the dark caverns of strangers’ mouths.
She wears embroidered dresses with yellowed armpits,
and her repeatedly broken shoe laces are held together by fraying knots.
A line cook she met said I’m going to call you Nomad
when she told him her name was Lady.
It’s fitting. Lady doesn’t have a home.
She roams from city to city, always renting
apartments with eggshell walls, which she paints
yellow rain coat,
ice cube silver, mudslide.
Despite what’s written in the lease, she never returns
the walls to their original white.
She imagines new tenants slicing celery, slicing jicama,
or black olives dumped from a tin can
while surrounded by the same colors that surrounded her
when she did her slicing.
Bridget Bell is an Ohio-born writer living in NYC, and she holds her MFA from Sarah Lawrence College. Her work has been published in the New Ohio Review, The Chaffey Review, Folio and SUB-LIT, among other publications. She works as a bartender in Manhattan’s financial district, and also as an assistant editor at FourWay Books.
[ LINK: decomP Magazine ]
James Arness portrayed Marshal Matt Dillon on "Gunsmoke" for 20 years after the series debuted in 1955.
While talking the big plan to be fiscally responsible the Republican freshmen havepacked a huge $553 billion spending bill with millions of pet defense projects for their home districts.[...]
Outraged by these cuts, Nathan Bootz, the superintendent of Ithaca Public Schools, wrote a letter to the editor in a local paper proposing an idea that could come out of a Jonathan Swift novel: if Snyder intends on draining funding from public schools, maybe Bootz should convert the schools in his district into prisons to get funding.
Noting that Michigan spends “between $30,000 and $40,000″ on each prisoner but can barely provide $7,000 per public school student, Bootz says that maybe we need to start treating “our students like they are prisoners, with equal funding“:
"He thinks Palin is an idiot. He thinks she’s stupid. He helped boost her up. People like Sarah Palin haven’t elevated the conservative movement."
