Robert Harding will be hosting Darius Shahinfar, Democratic candidate for Congress in the open NY-21 seat, tonight at 6:00PM eastern time for a live blogging session at The Albany Project.

Be sure and get there early so that...

... you don't have to stand in the back of the room.

Cross posted from The 10,000 Things

From 101 Zen Stories

A Cup of Tea

Nan-in, a Japanese master during the Meiji era (1868-1912), received a university professor who came to inquire about Zen.

Nan-in served tea. He poured his visitor's cup full, and then kept on pouring.

The professor watched the overflow until he no longer could restrain himself. "It is overfull. No more will go in!"

"Like this cup," Nan-in said, "you are full of your own opinions and speculations. How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup?"

Cross posted from The Albany Project

Bo Lipari has the news...

Currently, only one County Board of Elections chose the LibertyVote DRE (Hamilton), three chose Premier’s Automark (Albany, Schenectady, and Rockland), one chose ES&S’s Automark (New York City), and two whose choice is still unknown (Cayuga, Ulster). All other counties have selected the Sequoia ImageCast Ballot Marking Device/Scanner combination. At the moment, no county has picked the Avante DRE.

Cross posted from The 10,000 Things

Is there to be found on earth a fullness of joy, or is there no such thing? Is there some way to make life fully worth living, or is this impossible? If there is such a way, how do you go about finding it? What shouold you try to do? What should you seek to avoid? What should be the goal in which your activity comes to rest? What should you accept? What should you refuse to accept? What should you love? What should you hate?

What the world values is money, reputation, long life, achievement. What it counts as joy is health and comfort of body, good food, fine clothes, beautiful things to look at, pleasant music to listen to.

What it condemns is lack of money, a low social rank, a reputation for being no good, and an early death.

Cross Posted from The 10,000 Things

The Turtle

Chuang Tzu with his bamboo pole
Was fishing in Pu river.

The Prince of Chu
Sent two vice-chancellors
With a formal document:
"We hereby appoint you
Prime Minister."

I've been working the phones and email on this issue since I first saw it earlier today. I see that it received a wee bit of play here.

I dissected this over at The Albany Project. We can title this... "How not to write a press release in support of your candidate."

With 8 days until the New York Presidential Primary NOW-NY went on the offensive for Hillary Clinton.

And I do mean offensive.

Capital Confidential reports the New York chapter of NOW has issued "a scathing reaction" (and adds that "scathing" is perhaps an inadequate adjective) to Teddy Kennedy's endorsement of Sen. Barack Obama.

Pay attention class... this is a lesson in how not to support your candidate... NOW-NY's statement below the fold:

Cross posted from The 10,000 Things

Harper's Magazine features a great story about President George W. Bush and his favorite painting.

The painting is called "A Charge to Keep," and President Bush is so inspired by it that he has taken the painting’s name for his own official autobiography, saying:

Cross posted from The Albany Project

The Times Unions Capital Confidential blog is reporting that the State Board of Elections has agreed on three optical scan compatiable machines as acceptable machines for the various county boards of election to select from.

BOE has chosen its voting machines...
January 24, 2008 at 11:30 am by Irene Jay Liu
...and the winners are:

Sequoia Imagecast, Premier Automark with modification requested by the Republicans, the ES&S Automark with modification requested by the Republicans.

All three machines are optical scan machines, none of them are DREs.

Counties must choose their machines by Feb. 8. In a funny twist of irony, if the counties do not choose by that deadline, then the state BOE will attempt to mediate between the two party commissioners to make a decision.

To be clear, this is the list of the approved vendors. Each county will be able to choose the machine they want from the approved list.

Cross posted from The 10,000 Things

UPDATE: The ACLU has the poll numbers.

Yesterday I wrote about the phenomenon of faith, idolatry, and leadership.

And while stock market meltdowns dominated the news yesterday the battle over our civil liberties reared it's ugly head again.

Former Presidential Candidate Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut received, rightly, a great deal of praise for his courageous stand against retroactive immunity for the telecom industry during his all too short lived campaign:

Cross posted from The 10,000 Things

I've just finished reading Dynamics of Faith by Paul Tillich. Tillich is one of the most prominent theologians of this past century. If you are used to philosophical and theological discussions then his book is a good read. If not, then you may find it a bit difficult.

Tillich spends 146 pages defining a very difficult word... faith. He opens...

1. FAITH AS ULTIMATE CONCERN

"Faith is the state of being ultimately concerned: the dynamics of faith are the dynamics of man's ultimate concern. Man, like every living being, is concerned about many things, above all about those which condition his very existence, such as food and shelter. But man, in contrast to other living beings, has spiritual concerns - cognitive, aesthetic, social, political. Some of them are urgent, often extremely urgent, and each of them as well as the vital concerns can claim ultimacy for a human life or the life of a social group.

Cross posted from The 10,000 Things

Tao Te Ching #29- Robert G. Henricks translation

For those who would like to take control of the world and act on it -
I see that with this they simply will not succeed.
The world is a sacred vessel;
It is not something that can be acted upon.
Those who act on it destroy it;
Those who hold on to it lose it.

With things - some go forward, others follow;
Some are hot, others blow cold;
Some are firm and strong, others submissive and weak.
Some rise up while others fall down.
Therefore the Sage:
Rejects the extreme, the excessive, and the extravagant.

The Fasting of the Heart

Yen Hui, the favorite disciple of Confucious, came to take leave of his Master.

"Where are you going?" asked Confucious.

"I am going to Wei."

"And what for?"

Cross posted from The 10,000 Things

Now I am going to blog something here. I don't know whether it fits into the category of other people's blogs or not. But whether it fits in their category or whether it doesn't, it obviously fits into some category. So in that respect it is no different from their blogs. However, let me try writing my blog.

Cross posted from The 10,000 Things

The Pivot

Tao is obscured when men understand only one of a pair of opposites, or concentrate only on a partial aspect of being. Then clear expression also becomes muddled by mere word-play, affirming this one aspect and denying all the rest.

Hence the wrangling of Confucians and Mohists; each denies what the other affirms, and affirms what the other denies. What use is this struggle to set up "No" against "Yes," and "Yes" against "No"? Better to abandon this hopeless effort and seek true light!

Rep. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY-20) held her sixteenth town hall this past Saturday, Jan. 12, at the Livingston Town Hall in Columbia County.

In just her first year Congresswoman Gillibrand honored her pledge to hold a town hall meeting in each of the ten counties she represents.  This will be her sixteenth town hall since January of 2007.   In addition to her town hall meetings, Congresswoman Gillibrand regularly holds Congress At Your Corner events at local hot spots, such as grocery and book stores, to bring her office out in to the community she serves.

Gillibrand added, "I believe accountability and accessibility to the families of our community is very important to being an effective representative and I am committed to both."

The topic of the forum was Rising Costs of Taxes on Upstate Families...

Cross posted from The 10,000 Things

All across punditry and blog-land lips and fingers are moving and the same questions are being asked...

What happened last night?

How did she "come back" to win?

Various theories are being offered up. Some based on facts and others *** cough *** Chris *** cough *** Matthews *** cough *** cough *** based on bullshit.

The fun thing about numbers is that they can tell multiple stories depending on which ones you look at, in what combinations and with what weights you view them. Multiple conclusions can be drawn from them that are not all necessarily wrong or even in conflict with each other.

The fun thing about bullshit is that it starts as bullshit, comes across as bullshit, remains bullshit and produces nothing other than more bullshit.

We'll stick to numbers from here on out...

Cross posted from The 10,000 Things

This is wild.

Fox Fiction Network not only spins the news, not only makes it up, not only is a propoganda outlet for one segment of the right wing fringe but when presented with facts from the horses mouth refuting their fiction they "take it under advisement." When presented with the subject of their fiction refuting their story they state their fiction is "well sourced."

In the last couple days Fox News reported that Paul Begala and Jame Carville were joining Hillary Clinton's Presidential campaign in order to save it.

This was news to Carville and Begala. Carville was quoted as saying:

"Fox was, is and will continue to be an asinine and ignorant network."

Republicans are ugly.

From freeperville:

Is Hussein Obama the weakest Dem for the General election?
Iowa Caucus ^ | January 3, 2008 | nwrep

Posted on 01/03/2008 9:07:11 PM PST by nwrep

Did the weakest Dem candidate for the general election won tonight? I think so.

By sending forth Hussein Osama out of Iowa, Democrats have unwittingly weakened their general election prospects.

Hussein's exotic mixture of radical liberalism, Kwanzaa Socialism, antipathy towards the unborn, and weakness against his jihadi brethren will all come back to destroy him against almost any Republican opponent, even the snake-grope from Hope.

I think we as Republicans should be celebrating tonight at the coronation of Hussein, in whose presence millions of Democrat women, from elementary school teachers to journalism majors to law school grads to dykes on bikes will go weak in their knees.

As defenders of this great Republic, and of the pinnacle of Western civilization that it represents, we should all come together tonight and agree on a common strategy that will keep the White House from becoming a madrassa.

God Bless America, Land of the Free.

Cross-posted from The Albany Project

They write letters...

From the Glens Falls Post Star (third letter down) via Judith Hope of The Eleanor Roosevelt Legacy Committee...

A wing nut tells what is and is "Not Suitable for Women?!?!"