Open Note to the Right

President Obama won the 2008 election by 8 million + votes, and garnered more than twice the Electoral College votes needed for victory -- 365 to 173. The major campaign issues: Economy, Energy, Health care, Immigration, Iran, Iraq and Taxes: in overwhelming numbers, the American people rejected the Republican stance on these issues, and in less than 90 days Obama and his Cabinet have acted purposefully on ALL of them.

So: Will Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh and Mark Levin please stop talking as if some Socialist Dictator took over the country while we were sleeping!
WE ELECTED THIS GUY, AND THE MAJORITY OF US WANT HIM AND HIS POLICIES TO SUCCEED!

St. Jack

When the movement starts to have me canonized, folks will be digging around for the three necessary certified miracles. Here's number three:

This can of shaving cream looks and feels empty, but it has continued to ooze gel for TEN shaves and counting!
For numbers 1 and 2, click 'read more'.



1 -- Newark, Ivy St. playground, 1954: In the bottom of the 9th I caught Tommy Spamponata's two-out, bases loaded sinking liner in left-center BAREHANDED to secure a 12-11 victory;


2 -- Hof, Bavaria, 1960: Falling down drunk, as the anchor man of our bowling team, with 9 open frames on my scorecard, I knelt on the foul line, beseeched Christ to help me, then rolled three straight strikes to beat the visiting Heidelberg fencing team by a single pin!!!

American scholar John Hope Franklin dies at 94

Obituary and photos from The New York Times


John Hope Franklin, a prolific scholar of African-American history who profoundly influenced thinking about slavery and Reconstruction while helping to further the civil rights struggle, died Wednesday in Durham, N.C. He was 94.

A spokeswoman for Duke University, where Dr. Franklin taught, said he died of congestive heart failure at the university�s hospital.


With Bill Clinton, in 2005

During a career of scholarship, teaching and advocacy that spanned more than 70 years, Dr. Franklin was deeply involved in the painful debates that helped reshape America�s racial identity, working with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., W. E. B. Du Bois, Thurgood Marshall and other major civil rights figures of the 20th century.

�I will always think of John Hope as the historian of the South who grasped the complexity of Southern public life as shaped by the horror of personal slavery,� said Nell Irvin Painter, the Princeton University historian. �Franklin was the first great American historian to reckon the price owed in violence, autocracy and militarism.�

It was a theme Dr. Franklin wrestled with into his last years. In an article in The Atlantic Monthly in 2007, he wrote, �If the American idea was to fight every war from the beginning of colonization to the middle of the 20th century with Jim Crow armed forces, in the belief that this would promote the American idea of justice and equality, then the American idea was an unmitigated disaster and a denial of the very principles that this country claimed as its rightful heritage.�

Dr. Franklin combined idealism with rigorous research, producing such classic works as �From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African-Americans,� first published in 1947. Considered one of the definitive historical surveys of the American black experience, it has sold more than three million copies and has been translated into Japanese, German, French, Chinese and other languages.

Robert W. Fogel, a Nobel Prize-winning economist at the University of Chicago, called it �a landmark in the interpretation of American civilization.�

Johnny Blanchard, dead at 76

ROBBINSDALE, Minn., March 25 (UPI) -- Johnny Blanchard, who played eight seasons in the major leagues and appeared in five World Series, died Wednesday at the age of 76.

Blanchard died of a heart attack, St. Paul Pioneer-Press columnist Charley Waters reported.

Blanchard played for the New York Yankees in 1955 and from 1959-65. He split his final major-league season between the Yankees, Kansas City Athletics and Milwaukee Braves.

He was with the Yankees in their heyday, appearing in the World Series each season from 1960-64. New York won two of those World Series, including in 1961 when Blanchard hit .400 overall and two home runs against the Cincinnati Reds.

Waters described Blanchard as a close friend of Yankees great Mickey Mantle.

Blanchard appeared in 516 games over his career, mostly as either an outfielder or catcher. He hit .239 with 67 home runs.

The Star Tribune newspaper in Minneapolis said Blanchard was a three-sport star at Minneapolis Center High School, playing basketball and football in addition to baseball.
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On July 21,1961, Johnny B hammered a ninth inning, two out, pinch hit grand slam home run at Fenway Park to push the Yanks to an 11-8 victory over the Red Sox. The next day Blanchard hit another ninth inning, pinch hit homer to spark a second come-from- behind victory over Boston.

On July 26, the man they called "Super- Sub" slashed his third and fourth home runs at Yankee Stadium against the Chicago White Sox. The homers drove in four runs as the Yanks beat the White Sox, 5-2.

Four straight homers over three games tied a major league record

Talk to Barack

techPresident


Want to help our President rid the Republic of the evil forces of greed and corruption? He needs your help, and now's your chance! Just click 'techPresident' and get going!

"We're going to try something a little different," says President Obama in a new video released tonight. "We're going to take advantage of the Internet to bring all of you to the White House to talk about the economy." And with that, the new administration inaugurated the West Wing edition of Open for Questions, the experiment in giving citizens a direct line to the Oval Office that the transition team first ran during the Change.gov days.

As Micah mentioned below, Open for Questions signals that the Obama Administration is taking seriously its stated commitment to running a participatory and wired White House. OFQ was announced in a blog post posted just an hour or so before Obama's traditional press conference before Chuck Todd, Jake Tapper, and the rest of the the White House press corps tonight. On Thursday, the president will take time to participate in "a special online town hall." The event will be live streamed on WhiteHouse.gov, and he'll answer "some of the most popular questions." (That's wording, of course, that gives the Administration a good deal of wiggle room in deciding which questions to address).

That's not a great deal of time, and might be one way of managing the influx of questions. A little over an hour after the feature went live, about 1,150 people have submitted 815 questions and cast 22,500 votes. [UPDATE: Some new numbers -- as of 8:40pm ET, approximately 2,400 people have submitted 2,200 questions and have cast 59,500 votes.] Like the Change.gov version, this new Open for Questions is powered by Google Moderator.

During Blackberry-gate, we spent much time talking about how his trusty PDA might help keep the new president from being trapped in a hermetically-sealed White House bubble. Obama stills seems eager not to let that happen. "This is an experiment," he said, in announcing OFQ. "But it's also an exciting opportunity for me to look at a computer and get a snapshot of what Americans across the country care about...This way, I can get a sense of your concerns, and give you some straight answers."

He wrapped by issuing a bit of a challenge: "So, America, what do you want to know about the economy? Just go to whitehouse.gov and ask me."

UPDATE: Our Andrew Rasiej offers a comment: "This represents further proof that the new media team at the White House is determined to bring the White House on par with the web as we know it today and fulfill the President's promise for a more transparent and responsive government."

The Quest for the Perfect Coffee Mug

Mug finalists



A perfect cup of coffee is about as easy to create as a perfect circle, and obtaining the correct coffee (Sumatran)and other ingredients (half and half, two sugars) is just the beginning. From there one needs the perfect brewer (a wide range of acceptables here, but a French Press is really the best)and, perhaps most importantly, the correct receptacle. What, you may ask, makes the perfect receptacle? Ah, grasshopper... read on!

1. more capacity than a wimpy teacup
2. decidedly hefty
3. durable -- fearlessly immune to sink 'accidents'
4. Signature -- it should be one-of-a-kind, a standout in the kitchen cabinet.

After years of painstaking trial and error, the attached hero emerges.