February 14, 2016

There were 4 posts published on February 14, 2016 (this is page 1 of 1).

Half my life in Raleigh

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According to a geeky tool known as www.timeanddate.com, Friday was the date when I officially spent half of my life in Raleigh. I arrived on Sunday, 2 August 1992 to attend N.C. State and somehow never left. Prior to Raleigh, the longest I’d ever lived somewhere was 7 years in Columbia, SC, where I finished elementary school and started middle school.

August 2nd wasn’t my first look at Raleigh that year. I originally drove up from Columbia for the Jimmy Buffett concerts on 12-13 June 1992, staying at the Barton Place condo being rented by my high school buddy, Mike. My very first look at Raleigh was driving up for the State-Carolina game on 17 Oct 1987. I crashed at my friend Chris’s dorm room in Bragaw Hall. He gave me a tour of Raleigh’s then-desolate downtown.

Back then I never thought Raleigh would ever hold my interest. Fortunately, it has grown to suit me. I don’t know if my kids will decide to stay here, though. My daughter seems set on new horizons but one can never say never. For me, though, Raleigh’s been a wonderful place to live, work, and play and it gets a little better every day.

New Scandal for US: Republicans Asked Tehran to Keep US Prisoners (including Navy and Marines) in Jail Until Presidential Elections | Veterans Today

If this is true, and so far there is no independent confirmation, it would not be the first time that Republicans have tried to convince Iranians to continue holding our hostages for partisan reasons.

TEHRAN (FNA)- Iran’s top security official Rear Admiral Ali Shamkhani disclosed on Thursday that the US Republicans had demanded Tehran to suspend the January prisoners’ swap deal with Washington until the presidential elections in the US.

“The US Republicans sent a message to Tehran, demanding us not to release the American spies until the presidential race starts in the US,” Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council Ali Shamkhani said on Thursday.

“However, we did release the US prisoners in an independent decision,” he continued.

Source: New Scandal for US: Republicans Asked Tehran to Keep US Prisoners (including Navy and Marines) in Jail Until Presidential Elections | Veterans Today

Why Not Being Friends With Henry Kissinger Matters

In the midst of questioning the United States’ history of overthrowing and meddling in other countries’ governments, Bernie Sanders denounced Hillary Clinton for befriending and taking advice from former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.

Numerous media commentators reacted by mocking the Sanders campaign, believing millennials could not possibly know anything about Kissinger. They suggested millennials did not care about what Kissinger did either.

It was typical of an establishment media class, which eschews serious reflection on the record of any current or former official’s role in war crimes or atrocities. But Kissinger is someone who Clinton has mentioned multiple times during debates and at campaign events. She said during the last debate in New Hampshire, “I was very flattered when Henry Kissinger said I ran the State Department better than anybody had run it in a long time.”

Source: Why Not Being Friends With Henry Kissinger Matters

Can we make sense of the Malheur mess? — High Country News

I am isolated by a culture that is as inscrutable to me as any in the mountains of Afghanistan. For loving wilderness and empty lands and birdsong rather than teeming cities, I risk being called a xenophobe, a noxious nativist. For viewing guns as constitutionally protected, essential tools of self-defense and, if need be, liberation, I’m told that I defend the massacres of innocents in mass shootings. When I came to Montana at age twenty-five, I found in this vast landscape, especially in the public lands where I hunted and camped and worked, the freedom that was evaporating in the South, where I grew up. I got happily lost in the space and the history. For a nature-obsessed, gun-soaked malcontent like me, it was home, and when Ammon Bundy and his men took over the Malheur refuge, on a cold night in January, I thought I should go visit my neighbors.

Source: Can we make sense of the Malheur mess? — High Country News