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Contest: Win an invite to the Rodeo Forum!
This year Bill Maher, Al Franken, David Faustino, and I will be hosting the annual Rodeo Forum, featuring a host of progressive notables from Howard Dean to Randi Rhodes to Jerry Springer to Madeline Albright.
And, if you're a conservative or a Republican, it might include you too!
One of the criticisms of progressives is that we don't spend enough time on outreach, and this year I'll be trying to change that. Up to ten lucky winners will be able to attend the Forum as my guest. And, it'll be not just a wonderful learning experience but an enjoyable vacation as well.
The lucky winners will be flown from your home town to a major hub, and from there you'll board a private jet owned by one of our regular guests. We'll fly you to the Malibu estate of one of our HuffAndBlow contributors (TBA), and you'll enjoy a wonderful breakfest by the sea.
Then, it's off to Brentwood for a day spent watching me write my columns and my upcoming book, and learning about my political tranformation from a conservative into a progressive. And, don't be surprised if a few of my celebrity friends drop by for a chat!
After a refreshing night spent at L'Hermitage Hotel in Beverly Hills, you will get to join the Forum as my special guest.
Throughout it all, I will be careful not to "push" progressivism on you or try to make you transform in the way that I did. Rather, I will gently guide you towards a deeper understanding of our ideology, and show you by example how we progressives view the world and what leads us to the ideology we have.
You might still be a conservative when you leave the Forum, but I hope not! I hope that at the end of your stay you'll have the ability to see how interconnected we are and how we need to rely on each other for support, and how we need to work for the common good.
Entering the contest is easy, but you do need to be a conservative or a Republican. All you have to do is post a comment to this post before September 15, 2006. Provide a little background information on yourself as well as where you rank yourself on the political scale (far-right, right, moderate-right, libertarian, etc.) And, most importantly of all, write a 50 word essay describing why you want to attend the Forum with me. That's all! I'll select up to 10 of you and whisk you off to a wonderful, enjoyable learning experience.
Posted by Ariadne to Ariadne at 02:48 PM | Comments (1)
Inuit my ass!
The news that a beer is being brewed using run-off from the melting Arctic ice cap comes as a terrible blow. It's a slap in the face to all of us who've been fighting global warming to think that beer drinking slobs around the world will soon be literally drinking our melting future. The product is made at a plant in Narsaq Greenland, which is 390 miles south of the Arctic Circle.
And, we're informed that the brewery is Inuit. Inuit my ass! The indigenous peoples of Greenland are well aware of the threats of global warming: they're forced to live with it day in and day out. There is no way in the world that any true native person would condone or much less be involved in this scandalous operation. Thankfully, that's confirmed with the knowledge that none other than Steen Outzen owns the brewery.
I urge you to write, call, FAX, or email Denmark (which owns Greenland) and tell them to stop this practice immediately:
Embassy of Denmark
3200 Whitehaven St. N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20008
Tel: +1 (202) 234-4300
Fax: +1 (202) 328-1470
wasamb@um.dk
Posted by Lori Gold to Lori Gold at 02:00 PM | Comments (4)
Scientists, media agree on global warming effects!
Like a gathering storm, the disastrous effects of mankind's playing with nature by encouraging global warming are becoming too powerful for even the corporate media to ignore. A roundup:
The Independent offers "Jellyfish plague blamed on climate change":
[Dr. Gianluca Sara, the assistant professor of ecology and marine biology at the University of Palermo] said: "I have no scientific data but, as an observer, there seems to be a huge increase along the Sicilian coast. I feel that temperature increase and over-fishing are related to this though, at the moment, this is only my feeling."
Reuters offers "Swiss mountain crumbles under hot climate":
A further increase in temperatures of only 3 degrees Celsius could make another 80 percent of glacier ice disappear by the end of the century, their study warned, threatening farmers, villages and tourists.
And, the Sun offers "Giant swordfish netted":
[Referring to a 58 pound swordfish that was caught in the North Sea off Britain, fishing expert] Sam Harris said: "It should not be there. Maybe it has ended up there because of warmer waters due to global warming."
Tread lightly out there, the future of the Earth is at stake.
Posted by Lori Gold to Lori Gold at 10:24 PM | Comments (0)
Somos unidos con Fidel Castro!
There are only two real democracies in the Western Hemisphere, and one of them isn't Venezuela. The other is, of course, Cuba: a tropical paradise with free, high-quality healthcare and a 97% literacy rate. For almost fifty years, Sr. Castro has been leading Cuba, managing crises, weathering storms, guiding it from peak to peak of successes, and, of course, dealing with the insane oppression of its much larger neighbor to the north.Now, Sr. Castro is in ill health, but the signs are that he will continue to lead the island nation for years to come. We at HuffAndBlow wish him the very best, and we know it won't be long before we see him puffing away and astonishing the world with his successes.
Here is the text of a letter that was read on state television:
Be well, mi amigo.Because of the enormous effort involved in visiting the Argentine city to attend the Mercosur meeting, at the closing of the Summit of the Peoples in the historic University of Cordoba and the visit to Alta Gracia, the city where Che (Guevara) lived in his childhood and immediately afterward attending the commemoration of the 53rd anniversary of the attack on the Moncada and Carlos Manuel de Cespedes barracks, the 26th of July of 1953, in the provinces of Granma and Holguin, days and nights of continuous work with hardly any sleep, have caused my health, which has withstood all tests, to fall victim to extreme stress and to be ruined.
This has caused in me an acute intestinal crisis with sustained bleeding that has obliged me to undergo a complicated surgical operation. All the details of this health accident can be seen in X-rays, endoscopies and filmed material. The operation will force me to take several weeks of rest, away from my responsibilities and duties.
As our country is threatened in circumstances like this by the government of the United States, I have made the following decision:
1) I delegate in a provisional manner my functions as first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba to the second secretary, comrade Raul Castro Ruz.
2) I delegate in a provisional manner my functions as Commander in Chief of the heroic Revolutionary Armed Forces to the same comrade, Army Gen. Raul Castro Ruz.
3) I delegate in a provisional manner my functions as president of the Council of State and of the government of the Republic of Cuba to the first vice-president, comrade Raul Castro Ruz.
4) I delegate in a provisional manner my functions as the main driving force behind the National and International Program of Public Health to Politburo member and Public Health Minister, comrade Jose Ramon Balaguer Cabrera.
5) I delegate in a provisional manner my functions as the main driving force behind the National and International Education Program to comrades Jose Ramon Machado Ventura and Esteban Lazo Hernandez, members of the Politburo.
6) I delegate in a provisional manner my functions as the main driving force behind the National Program of the Energy Revolution in Cuba and cooperation with other countries in this field to comrade Carlos Lage Davila, member of the Politburo and secretary of the Executive Committee of the Council of Ministers.
The relevant funds for these programs - health, education and energy - should continue to be assigned and prioritized, as I have been doing personally, by comrades Carlos Lage Davila, Secretary of the Executive Committee of the Council of Ministers; Francisco Soberon Valdes, Minister President of the Central Bank of Cuba; and Felipe Perez Roque, Foreign Relations Minister, who have accompanied me in these duties and should constitute a committee for this purpose.
Our glorious Communist Party, supported by mass organizations and the entire public, has the mission of carrying out the duties outlined in this proclamation...
Posted by John Ciccilini to John Ciccilini at 10:32 PM | Comments (2)
