This film and this book really brought home the horrors of the sex slave trade, and how it’s a definitely a growth industry! A very scary thought…

If you sell guns or drugs, you make one sale, but if you sell a human being, you can sell that person many, many times a day, for many years, or as long as you can keep that person enslaved.

The premise of the movie is that international organizations and contractors sanctioned by our own state department are engaging in and profiting from the international slave trade.

Here’s a quote from the book: “Each year nearly 12,000 Nepali girls are sold by their families, intentionally or unwittingly, into a life of sexual slavery in the brothels of India.”

It’s also happening in the United States…

Do you get the feeling Obama and Democratic leaders have completely caved in?

I mean, is the right wing of the Republican Party that frightening?  Why have the Dems chosen to play dead and let the tea party-hard-cases dismantle 70 years of the American social safety net? No wait, I understand. Obama’s a dangerous socialist, that’s right. Almost forgot.

So we’re going to allow these ideological crazies to balance the massive federal budget (that Bush created, let’s be honest here) on the backs of poor and middle-class people struggling just to get by, while the wealthiest individuals and corporations pay little or NO taxes.

Where’s the outrage?!

Our unions are DOA. The American worker has been cowed into surrendering benefits and pay so corporations can post historic profits. But no one seems to notice the erosion. GE, who paid no tax, supposedly has a larger tax department than the IRS!

So, you want to know what that sinking feeling is? It’s the Dems lying down without a fight. Not much is at stake here, by the way. Only the entire social fabric of the country.

“…The world is watching in fearful — and sometimes gleeful — fascination as the Tea Party drives a Thunderbird off the cliff with the president and speaker of the House strapped in the back. The Dow is hiding under the bed with a glass of single malt. Can it get more excruciating? Apple has more cash than the U.S. government.

Amid the chilling anarchy, there’s not a single strong leader to be seen — not even a misguided one. All the leaders are followers. You have to wonder if President Obama at some level doesn’t want to lead. Maybe he just wants to be loved…”

To read the full editorial, go to: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/31/opinion/sunday/dowd-tempest-in-a-tea-party.html?_r=1&ref=maureendowd

Michael Hiltzik of the L.A. Times has ruined my day. Probably my all-time favorite company, Amazon, just cut loose its California Associates so it could pursue a strategy of greed:

http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jul/17/business/la-fi-hiltzik-20110717

This is a very cool post on today’s NY Times.

Here’s the link: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/07/03/movies/harry-potter-timeline.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha28.

You can track the dates from when J.K. Rowling got the idea for her boy-wizard on a train ride, to writing that first book, to finally being accepted by a publisher, to the first books becoming instant hits, to the Times starting a Children’s Best-seller list, and so on. And all this before the movies! Clips included. There’s even a lawsuit in the timeline. Phenomenal.

This piece by Michael Sokolove (in yesterday’s New York Times’ Magazine) is the best article I’ve ever read on the physics of baseball. Here’s a sample:

At 90 miles per hour, average major-league speed, a baseball leaves the pitcher’s hand and travels about 56 feet to home plate in 0.4 seconds, or 400 milliseconds. The batter’s eyes must first find the ball, Adair writes, then sensory cells in the retina encode information on its speed and trajectory and send it to the brain. This all takes about 75 milliseconds, during which the pitched ball has traveled nine feet.

It’s also a discussion on aging in baseball, specifically Jeter who turned 37 yesterday, but just signed a three year contract w/ the Yankees worth 51 Million — mainly because he’s a few swings from his 3000th hit.

Very much worth the read… and fascinating if you’re a fan of the sport.  http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/26/magazine/for-derek-jeter-on-his-37th-birthday.html?_r=1&ref=magazine

Is there anything more reliable than the gleeful venom of the Saturday Letters in the Sports page? Here’s a beauty, one of many, from today’s L.A. Times:

My suggestion to whomever buys the Dodgers and doesn’t get the stadium parking lot, concessions, sunflower seeds, etc… Here’s what you do. Move the Dodgers back to the Coliseum, where it all began, until a new stadium can be built. Change the name to the Los Angeles Free, if you have to, so Frank McCourt doesn’t get a piece of the souvenirs and to be done with him. Let him have the parking lot, the bobble-heads, the Dodger blankets and let him live in the stadium he took from the people of Los Angeles.

BRUCE KALISH

Encino

It’s hard to choose, but this one wins on comprehensiveness, anger and historical sweep. I’m with you, Bruce.

The New York Times reported today that the courier’s cellphone taken in the raid on Bin Laden’s Abbottabad compound “contained contacts to a militant group that is a longtime asset of Pakistan’s intelligence agency…”

Here’s the whole story:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/24/world/asia/24pakistan.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha2

Is it any wonder that Pakistani officials were “furious” about the raid?

Yes, it was an invasion of their national sovereignty, but it’s also embarrassed them and possibly revealed they were shielding Bin Laden. That’s got to piss them off…

The Pakistani guys in my local 7-11 store would always call me “Boss.” I would gently upbraid them, explaining that my name is Joe and that they needn’t call me “Boss.”

The funniest of these guys is named “Win.” Whenever I would see him, I’d exclaim, “Win-win!” And he would smile and say, “Yes, it’s a win-win situation.”

This morning Win was particularly harried and after he bagged my stuff, he said, “Thank you, Boss-man.” Then he looked up at me, did a slight double-take and said, “No, sorry, not Bossman…” I said, “You can call me Joe-man.”

He smiled, nodding as he looked down, like he should have remembered. I politely explained that the connotations of the word have a tortured history in our country, particularly for African Americans and prison populations. I tried to point out that the address was subservient and he should treat me as an equal. Then I added, “Besides you’re Win-win!”

He laughed and I think appreciated it. Or maybe he thinks I’m a royal pain. This morning at the pool, one of the swimmers called me “Sir.” What is it with these guys? I remember I used to say that when I wanted to please someone. A couple of times I’ve told this swim-mate of mine that he can call me Joe, but he persists.

What do you say when someone calls you “Boss?” or “Sir?”

Keith Olbermann’s new show on Current TV is reviewed by Mary McNamara in the L.A. Times:

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/showtracker/2011/06/tv-review-keith-olbermann-comes-out-swinging-on-currents-new-countdown.html

She argues, well I think, that Olbermann should display more humility because his uber-image as a media superstar undermines the content of his message.

She points out, Olbermann is…

refreshing, and singular, in the clarity of his mission, which is to defend the liberal point of view with the same sort of take-no-prisoners rhetoric that conservative pundits like Bill O’Reilly have wielded so effectively.

Herein lies the problem. Can humility go hand-in-hand with the above mission statement? It would be nice, (sometimes his self-congratulatory moments make me wince) but is humility what we want from our spewing, left-wing, go-to-the-mat, take-down guy? I think not.