Sunday Viewpoints
OBAMA IS IN TROUBLE
Barack Obama won the presidency with 53 percent of the national vote, the best Democratic showing since Lyndon B. Johnson buried Barry Goldwater with a record 61.1 percent in 1964. And after Al Franken was awarded the disputed Senate race in Minnesota and Arlen Specter switched parties, the Democrats had 60 senators for the first time since the Watergate Era in the 1970s. (Updated: 03/14/10 7:07 AM )
Fear is still the GOP’s leading export
Fear again. Not hope, nor patriotism, nor progress, nor any of the nobler emotions and impulses by which human beings are driven. Nope. None of those. (Updated: 03/14/10 6:32 AM )
A brother’s journey to Ireland, and to hearing
Every year around St. Patrick’s Day, my late father, Tommy Blake, would turn up on the television news, sometimes being interviewed, brogue at the ready, inside the jam-packed Buffalo Irish Center on “Luncheon Friday.” Now and again there were pretaped sit-downs with Channel 2’s Rich Kellman, which took place in my dad’s museum- like office in the basement of the Adult Learning Center on Elmwood Avenue. A humorous romp through Buffalo’s Irish history always ensued. (Updated: 03/14/10 6:32 AM )
Blogzerpts / Opinions from buffalonews.com
Excerpts from reader commentary on News staffers’ online blog postings last week. Online comments come from registered users, but — unlike reviewed and verified Everybody’s Column letters — can be posted under pen names. (Updated: 03/14/10 6:32 AM )
Haiti’s children cling to hope
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — They are just children. Some arrived as babies. Some lost their parents. Others were turned over because no one could afford to feed them. Together, over the years, they formed a cherished bond inside the walls of a Haitian mission, where they were taught to speak and pray in English by John Hearn, a Detroit pastor, and Florence Moffett, a devoted woman who had a midlife calling to be a missionary. (Updated: 03/07/10 6:34 AM )
How you can help
Albom is using his A Hole in the Roof Foundation to help the Caring and Sharing Mission directly. To donate, go to:
www.aholeintheroof.com
, call 313-993-4700 or write A Hole in the Roof Foundation, 150 Stimson St., Detroit, Mich. 48201 Other ways to donate: (Updated: 03/07/10 7:18 AM )
Parents need to get back to the basics
Memo to that Massachusetts school where children in physical education classes jump rope without using ropes: Get some ropes. And you—about 85 percent of all parents—who are constantly telling your children how intelligent they are: Do your children a favor and pipe down. (Updated: 03/07/10 6:34 AM )
Health plan will likely do more harm than good in the long run
As someone with a disability, I should be excited about President Obama’s health plan and motivated to fight for it to become law. But I’m not. (Updated: 03/07/10 6:34 AM )
Blogzerpts / Opinions from buffalonews.com
Excerpts from reader commentary on News staffers’ online blog postings last week. Online comments come from registered users, but — unlike reviewed and verified Everybody’s Column letters — can be posted under pen names. (Updated: 03/07/10 6:35 AM )
One of many tales of mixed ancestry
A number of articles during Black History Month focused on the nation’s first family and race. As an African-American, I find this topic particularly interesting. But some references to the nation’s first president of color reminded me of a front-page article the New York Times published last fall about the genealogy of first lady Michelle Obama (“First Lady’s Roots Reveal Slavery’s Tangled Legacy”). This article concerned me because it perpetuated and strengthened a standard, if not iconic, view of African-American history completely at variance with my own. (Updated: 03/07/10 6:34 AM )
Rush to drill is risky
As evident by the various testimonies given during the public meetings sponsored by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation on drilling in the Marcellus Shale, advocates and critics of hydraulic fracturing for natural gas in New York State have pretty well set out their arguments. Curiously, a more fundamental question— why are we so preoccupied with natural gas in the first place?— hasn’t even been asked. (Updated: 02/28/10 6:34 AM )
Blogzerpts / Opinions from buffalonews.com
Excerpts from reader commentary on News staffers’ online blog postings last week. Online comments come from registered users, but — unlike reviewed and verified Everybody’s Column letters — can be posted under pen names. (Updated: 02/28/10 6:34 AM )
We should punish bank executives, not shareholders
ATLANTA — U. S. District Court Judge Jed S. Rakoff really, really, really wanted to toss out a $150 million settlement between Bank of America and federal regulators last week. (Updated: 02/28/10 6:34 AM )
Refusing medical care sometimes best option
This man’s hand muscles are atrophied and sunken. The hands are contracted shut; he doesn’t move them. Nurses put rolls of gauze in his palms to keep his fingernails from digging into the skin. (Updated: 02/28/10 6:34 AM )
Margaret Sullivan: ‘30 in 30’ offers a fresh approach
We’re calling it “30 in 30”—and what it means is that, starting Monday, Buffalo News readers will find a month’s worth of new features in their daily paper. (The features will be print-edition only, not online.) (Updated: 02/28/10 10:51 AM )