Keeping Religion and Campaigning Separate

September 17, 2009 — Ron Chusid

Jay Riemersma is campaigning for Congress in Grand Haven and Holland today on a Christian Fundamentalist platform. Here’s a better attitude about mixing religion and politics from a great but fictional Republican–Senator Arnold Vinick, played by Alan Alda on The West Wing.

(The original video is no longer available, with the original clip present at the end of the longer segment posted above.)

Posted in Michigan News, Religion, Republicans, Separation of Church and State, Television. Tags: , . 1 Comment »

The Missing 300 Return

September 17, 2009 — Ron Chusid

Back in August the number of subscribers to the RSS feed abruptly fell by about 300 in a single day. The numbers do vary from day to day as Feedburner attempts to count the number of computers which are on which subscribe to the RSS feed. Therefore over the weekend the numbers generally fall (with the reported number of subscribers being from the previous day) but there had  never been a drop of 300. Maybe they were abducted by aliens and have now been released as I suddenly notice today that the count is back over 7000 were it was before the sudden drop.

More likely there was probably a glitch so that they were not counting the subscribers through one of the on line sites which pick up RSS feeds and they got it fixed. Now, if only Technorati could fix their problems and stop missing the majority of links to this and many other blogs.

Update: It looks like Feedburner is now having problems, dropping the count from over 7000 yesterday (in line with historical trends) to 998 today (September 18). On further Update I’ve heard from other bloggers that the problem is probably related to a long standing problem with Feedburner and Newsgator. Apparently subscribers who migrate from the older on-line version of Newsgator are not being picked up correctly.

Posted in Blogs & Social Media. No Comments »

Mary Travers Dies at 72

September 17, 2009 — Ron Chusid

Mary Travers of the folk group Peter, Paul, and Mary has died of leukemia at age 72. It is sure hard to believe she was 72. I guess the 60’s were quite a while back. The group, as became increasingly common later in the 60’s, mixed politics with their music:

Their sound may have been commercial and safe, but early on their politics were somewhat risky for a group courting a mass audience. Like Mr. Yarrow and Mr. Stookey, Ms. Travers was outspoken in her support for the civil-rights and antiwar movements, in sharp contrast to clean-cut folk groups like the Kingston Trio, which avoided making political statements.

Peter, Paul and Mary went on to perform at the 1963 March on Washington and joined the voting-rights marches from Selma to Montgomery, Ala., in 1965.

Over the years they performed frequently at political rallies and demonstrations in the United States and abroad. After the group disbanded, in 1970, Ms. Travers continued to perform at political events around the world as she pursued a solo career.

Posted in Entertainment & Leisure, In The News. 6 Comments »
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