Brianland

Sans Sons —
a Song in Names Only

Jesus Christ
Isaac Newton
Plato
Mother Teresa
Florence Nightingale
Mary Magdalene
Joan of Arc
Lawrence of Arabia
Edward the Confessor
Betsy Ross
Rosa Parks
Bert Parks
Susan B. Anthony
Arthur C. Clarke
Ralph J. Gleason
the Dali Lama
the Pope
the Babe
Dr. John
Dr. Suess
Dr. Kellogg
Howard Hughes
Amelia Earhart
both the Wright brothers
Henry David Thoreau
Oliver Wendell Holmes
George Bernard Shaw
Beethoven
Tchaikovsky
Vivaldi
George Gershwin
George Balanchine
George Washington
Louie Armstrong
Lionel Hampton
Lillian Hellman
Billie Holiday
Bettye [...]

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We need a strong Leader in the Senate right now.
And old Harry Reid is SO not it.
Think of this 111th Senate full of all these kick-ass, get-things-done progressives & centrists:
Pat Leahy, Carl Levin, Russ Feingold, John Kerry, Chris Dodd, Dianne Feinstein, Barbara Boxer, Chuck Schumer, Dick Durbin, Barbara Mikulski, Ron Wyden . . .
not to [...]

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RAGING   GLORY
*

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The   D.C.  Dispatches
[Revised Edition]
*
1 – Jan. 14th -   Barackstock on Sunday
2 – Jan 17th –  We’re Gonna Sing
3 – Jan. 18th – The Baltimore Report
4 – Jan 19th –  Blissfully Ravaged In Democracy
5 – Jan 20th –  The Day That Could Never Happen
6 – Jan 21st – The [...]

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It’s funny when some Americans talk about who is an American and who isn’t . . .
And it made me think of some commonly-perceived “Great Americans” who weren’t born here, like  . . .
Christopher Columbus (Italian)  (“discovered” America, and for whom cities & holidays, and circles & squares are named after)
William Penn (English)  (founder of [...]

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The  Rose  of  Hope
*
Election  Night  2008
by Brian Hassett
Early morning in the Universe  –  sunrise over a New America.
I arose from the floor of a Harlem hotspot dreaming of something way bigger than me.  And right off the mat, the Election Morning Ritual of tea & subtlety, pacing & breathing, and dreaming in the bright new light [...]

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The Post Election Numbers:
The Presidential race –
I finalized my predictions on Nov. 1st, and called the final Electoral College to be:
367  to  171 and it turned out:
365  to  173

“My bad”:  I thought the Dems would pull off North Dakota;  and I gave Indiana to the Repubs, but the Dems squeaked it out by .9%.  And [...]

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This makes an excellent “program” to print out for the evening’s festivities . . . 
(all times Eastern;  all predictions as of Saturday, Nov. 1st, 2008)
And before you dive in   — click here http://thatradio.podhoster.com/index.php?sid=1399
and listen to a radio show about the election while you’re reading!  What fun!   
7:00 – – 6 states — The [...]

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Just for the fun and coolness of this magic moment in history . . .
it’s 
Brian’s Playful Prediction
Challenging Challenge Contest
*
The Game of Predicting History . . .  
Fair to be played up until 6AM (Eastern) Tuesday, November 4th, 2008. 
Make your own predictions at home,
then carry them around in your head. 
Look away now and make your [...]

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From Meet The Press, Sunday Oct. 19th, 2008. 
And this should have been spoken to Tim Russert R.I.P. but was delivered by Sec. of State Colin Powell to Tim’s brother & colleague Tom Brokaw.
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
I have some concerns about the direction that the [...]

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This is the home of my YouTube clips.
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = 
Here’s 6 minutes of flying into Winnipeg for the Summer Summit Kelvin reunion in 2009  . . . 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KA_TS-nq8nU
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = 
Here’s [...]

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     Where  Wayward  Jekylls  Hyde
                            The 
          Mighty  Bama-Rama  Rap
                                                                                by Brian Hassett, Sept. ‘08
Like tonight is the night,
          the Barack is The Rock,
And “change” is The Word,
          and the voice has been heard,
.
And the heart is on the drums,
          and passion’s playin’ bass,
And the word has hit [...]

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I started thinking about this watching tonight’s “Civil Forum” with Obama and McCain and this paster Rick Warren.  Somebody mentioned that he wrote “The Purpose-Driven Life”, and I remembered that was the book that woman read to the escaped convict who kidnapped her in Atlanta back in about 2005.  (March)
I’d always remembered the way she [...]

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Tim Russert just died. 
My initial post: 
I’m in shock. I just got home and will have MSNBC on all night. I was at the hospital and my cell went off 5 times and i couldn’t answer it but i knew something happened.
To explain it to non politicos, I’ve said it’s like Johnny Carson dying well before he [...]

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 This is a nice essay that was slipped over the transom by a fellow New York warrior in honor of Women’s History Month, thought I’d share. 
MEET THE NEW FEMININE FEMINISTS,
by Zoe Artemis
These days my life is divided up into two moving parts: teaching dancing, and campaigning for Barack Obama.  Yes, I’m a Baby-boomer for Barack.
On [...]

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Most people think this amazing PA primary is in April – but it’s really March 24th – ‘cause that’s the last day you can register.  If you’re not in it by then – you’re off the bus!  No scoop for you! 
You may have heard this one before, but Every Single Vote (Really) Counts in this [...]

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I was looking for this number and found the most optimistic guess at it (via the Hillary campaign) in the NYT yesterday:
“If the results of Florida & Michigan are allowed to stand, and Mr. Obama is awarded the delegates won by ‘uncommitted’ on the Michigan ballot, Mrs. Clinton would pick up 64 delegates toward the [...]

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You’re not going to believe this — it’s right out of a great espionage novel — but just after Super Tuesday, the great veteran politico Al Hunt, now Executive Editor at Bloomberg News, was emailing with the Obama campaign, who mistakenly included in a dispatch to Hunt the campaign’s projections for all the remaining states.  [...]

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“Goin’ all-in” – tonight the voters get called and lay the cards on the table. 
 
Poll closings:  (all times Eastern) 
 
7 PM  Vermont  (should be another double-digit win for Obama, making it 12 in a row)
 
7:30 PM  Ohio — thus begins the double-header nail-biters of the primary. 
 
8 PM – primaries end in most of Texas (but no media [...]

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Tick tick, click click, time’s a wastin’, page refreshing, Dynasty ending in Dallas.
Get Smart, Eight Years Is Enough; 
Voters Touched By An Angel To Crown New American Idol Next Week.
This is kinda hard to fathom, but do you realize that Hillary Clinton has never been ahead in the voter-elected pledged delegate count (what determines the nomination) for [...]

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“Meet me in Ohio!  Let’s have a debate!” demanded a seething, red-eyed Hillary Clinton last week. It’s a good-old Western showdown! 
 
Tonight, MSNBC, 9PM — 10:30PM Eastern, from the home of Rock n Roll, Cleveland, Ohio.
 
It’s 90 minutes, and will repeat numerous times during the overnight.  Moderated by Tim Russert and Brian Williams — two of [...]

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THE ROCK PARTY  and  THE FALL OF NEW YORK
                                                                         * 
It was a really magic night!  Until the nightmare. 
Couldn’t sleep the night before  –  up at 6 AM watching the camera follow Don Imus into his polling station with a long line of people out the door waiting to vote, and him saying, “I’ve Never seen [...]

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This was a letter to the editor, published in The Toronto Star, March 4, 2003.
“A Love Affair With Southern Neighbor Goes Bad” 
Growing up as a kid on the prairies in the 1960s and 70s I was instilled with a kind of knee-jerk anti-American sentiment that seemed to be fostered by every person I met.  Then [...]

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After Christina Aguilera’s performance of James Brown’s “It’s A Man’s World” at the Grammys, this is one of the more transcendent performances by any musician I’ve seen in years.  Or ever.  This woman’s a channel, for sure. 
“Live Earth” was the most watched event in human history, the single event experienced by more people at the [...]

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This is huge news, actually.  Hillary’s dropped the negative attacks, and she’s dropped the super-delegates as an issue!  
After a week of going negative didn’t work in Wisconsin, rather than coming into this debate on the offensive looking for the knock-out punch, she’s obviously changed her approach.  Rather than her “words don’t matter” and “plagiarism” [...]

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Obama just won Wisconsin by 17 points!  58% to 41% — another 60-40 voters’ decision, in another 5% African-American state. 
And he won Hawaii by even more than D.C. – 76% to 24%! 
It’s not only 10 victories in a row – it’s 10 blow-outs in a row.  Last night was his smallest victory yet, and it was by 17 [...]

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