Tag Archive for 'Huffington Post'

Valentine’s Day Politiku

Published
by
s000z
 on February 14, 2010
. 0 Comments
From Susannaspeier.com

Saint Valentine

St. Valentine’s Day –the day originally established to commemorate a priest who defied Claudius II to perform marriage ceremonies against the explicit orders of the tyrannical Emperor’s ruling that young men remain unmarried in order to maintain a strong army –is political in origin.

From Susannaspeier.com

Sex and Politics

The connections made between politics and Valentine’s Day in 2010 however, brings sex scandals to mind.  The public needs to know whether or not their elected officials are having extra-marital affairs as it could reveal a greater history of corruption. A sex scandal will affect public trust and and sometimes, as in the case of John Edwards, even destroy a political career.  Should politicians who are no longer even on the federal payroll continue to get this much media attention, though?

Former Rep. Charlie Wilson (D-TX)

Earlier this week, Amy Anderson, a high school friend, who I recently reconnected with through Facebook, posted Charlie Wilson’s obituary on her Facebook wall.  The retired Congressman’s heart gave out just four days before Valentine’s Day.

From Susannaspeier.com

Photo of the real Charlie Wilson taken a couple of years ago

Wilson, known as much for his womanizing as for his controversial politics, was played by Tom Hanks in the 2007 movie, “Charlie Wilson’s War.”

Mike Nichols’ and writer, Aaron Sorkin’s work on the film was nothing less than sublime in the way it rose above and beyond Hollywood’s pedantic tendency to enlighten the public with pre-packaged moral high ground conceits, wrapped in red tin foil and placed in heart shaped boxes with ribbons around the edge.

Amy, who had interned for Charlie Wilson a decade after events portrayed in the film took place, however, called my attention to other areas that had been, well, Hollywoodized. The buxom secretaries who were referred to as “Charlie’s Angels,” for example, were actually, “really smart” unlike the bubbleheaded bimbos Hollywood had taken the liberty to inflate.

From Susannaspeier.com

The Hollywood and the real Charlie Wilson story.

In honor of the late Saint Valentine as well as the late Charlie Wilson I am featuring Amy’s Politiku in this Valentine’s Day Politiku post.

Amy Anderson Politiku
known for his tales of
too much whiskey and women
but he did much more

Good Time Charlie drank
whiskey and fought soviets
Hanks played him too sweet

tall in suspenders
wearing a crooked toupee
a real deal Texan

Amy Anderson has had many jobs, but her first was an Intern for Charlie Wilson.

Brad MacDonald Politiku

Love and politics
accommodate the extremes.
What is your safe word?

Rebecca Lieb Politiku
Strippers and whores aren’t
on the valentines day tab
this year, Blackwater.

Brandon Ruckdashel Politiku
Obama and John
Were two sides of the same coin
A Hope turned to naught

From Susannaspeier.co


Mistress with child and John Edwards
Melissa Parrish Politiku
roses a good choice
for wife of an official.
what to get mistress?

Ken Wheaton Politiku
VD also stands
for venereal disease
so back off Cupid.

Wei Shin Politiku
South Carolina?
Nay, Sanford’s Valentine’s in
South America.

From Susannaspeier.com

Governor Mark Sanford

Much as I find the actions that brought about the sex scandals distasteful, I also fear the obsessive public fixation on them might be harming us more than we realize.

I wont pretend that sex scandals are less interesting than a 2,000 word health care overhaul bill. I will, however stipulate that if we recognize the collective tendency to turn sex scandals into media magnets and then make an active choice to only follow subsequent investigations if they serve the public interest, we could find a better use for our time and attention.

Susanna Speier Politiku
Okay, Congressman…
…bring back the Public Option
and I’ll sleep with you.

Pending approval by The Huffington Post’s editorial staff, the complete version of this article and several other fabulous Politiku on this topic will post on my Huffington Post Column as “Sex Scandal Politiku.”

Please follow @Politiku on Twitter, as well.
politiku background

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Neuroeconomics Politiku

Published
by
s000z
 on November 17, 2009
. 6 Comments

politiku background

The topic of the December Politiku was Neuroeconomics -or- the science of what happens to our brains when we shop.  I ended

If you’d like to read my Huffington Post Politiku Neuroeconomics for New Years click here.

What is Neuroeconomics?

To really get something of a sense of what this is about, I suggest you read what others have to say about it:

Tim Hartford’s Slate.com article on Neuroeconomics

Sharon Begley’s Newsweek article on Neuroeconomics

Elizabeth Eaves’ Forbes article on Neuroeconomics

Paul B. Farrell’s Market Watch article on Neuroeconomics

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Susanna Speier: Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize Politiku

Published
by
s000z
 on October 13, 2009
. 0 Comments

Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize Politiku is up on Huffpost, thanks to all the writers who churned them out so quickly. Please click in:
Susanna Speier: Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize Politiku

Posted using ShareThis

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Nobel Peace Prize Politiku

Published
by
s000z
 on October 11, 2009
. 7 Comments

On October 9, 2009, the Norwegian Nobel Committee made an surprising announcement.  Was it the fact that the news came only nine months into The President’s first term that made the news so shocking or was it the conceptual nature of the Nobel Committee’s kudos that caused so many waves to bristle?

From Blog Archive

Are Obama’s, “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples,” deserving of such a distinguished acknowledgment?

Submission deadline has already passed.  Click here if you’d like to read it on The Huffington Post and/or add commentary.

Want to submit for the November politiku post?  Click here to get the topic.

More context for how this decision was made -
Here’s the Nobel Committee’s announcement
Here’s the Reuters’ run down on what earned Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson and Jimmy Carter their Nobels.
Saturday Night Live’s Obama acceptance speech sketch
Read what Maureen Dowd, channeling Bill Clinton and W, has to say -or-
Check out my friend, Thomas Huynh’s Sun Tzu based commentary on the topic.

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Susanna Speier: Health Care Politiku

Published
by
s000z
 on October 10, 2009
. 0 Comments

Health Care Politiku is now up on my Huffington Post column. Please click in:
Susanna Speier: Health Care Politiku

Posted using ShareThis
FYI: It rocks my world when you take the time to add commentary.

The ticker below was provided by Families USA. An organization that Jennifer Jaff, a patient advocacy expert and one of the Health Care Politiku contributors, recommends:

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Health Care Reform Politiku

Published
by
s000z
 on September 8, 2009
. 3 Comments

The submission deadline for this archived Politiku Shout Out has already passed as the Health Care Politiku (formerly titled “Health Care Reform Politiku) has posted. The current Politiku Shout Out, however, is only a click away.

Health Care Reform is in the air which means time for a new Huffington Politiku. Please submit Politiku via the commentary section of this post or email me at susanna (at) susannaspeier (dot) com

From Blog Archive

Click here to read a deeply insightful op-ed on the topic by my fav NY Times columnist, Nick Kristof.

Still looking for inspiration?  Check out this viral You Tube video on Health Care.

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Anecdotal Ode to Digital-ness

Published
by
s000z
 on June 13, 2009
. 0 Comments


Empathy Politiku now on Huffpo. Thanks to the stellar line of contributors it was, well, stellar.  Even got syndicated at the top of the NYTimes.com Headlines around the web section last Thursday!!  The editors have, since then, archived it on their Blogrunner Souter retrospective page.

Started Tweeting, finally.  Since Politikus are so all-consuming when I work on them I started two Twitter accounts:  @SusannaSpeier (to Tweet and get Tweeted by re everything under the eventually-to-be-exploding Sun) and @Politiku (so individual Politikus can be syndicated as autonomous entities).  Tweets, with their 160 character limit, kinda lend themselves to that, anyway.  Plus, it enables the stuff submitted too late to include on Huffpo to circulate.

Boyfriend and I went to the Apple Store yesterday.  Generous, classy and supportive guy that he is, he wanted to get me an iPhone 3G and help me cover the cost of switching from Verizon to AT&T for my birthday.  Found the applications kinda cumbersome, tho.  Plus, it’s kinda slow.  Decided to wait for the new one to come out —it’ll be over twice as fast— and so he shopping spreed me with a flurry of breezy Gatsby-esque summer attire.

Facebook’s new staking a claim in ones own name land rush thing will be the end of Facebook, according to Douglas Rushkoff (who I met over a post-root canal reading at the Corneila Cafe St. circa 2000). Doug is pyrotechnic-ally brilliant (according to my own observations and also according to Joshua Goldberg) and so consequently I’m gonna hang back, like Doug is, and let whoever want to claim my name, claim my name.  Given the fact
Facebook
I’m the only Susanna Speier out there, whoever else might try to claim would do so for the loathsome purpose of selling it back to me at a premium and so, as a result, I wont ever try and steak a claim on a Facebook Vanity plate.

The beginning of the end of my Facebook relationship and I don’t even care.  Well, I sort of don’t.  See, I’m one of those people that thrives on interactions with others.  It energizes me.  Facebook birthday wall wishes were posting in throughout the day…spanning what, I think, was every single era of my life from elementary school on and I found this extraordinary.  Okay, I promised an ode so here goes:
(try and imagine this as though scored by a minimalist composer)

Huffpo, Twitter and the iPhone’s nixed
now, according to Doug Rushkoff,
Facebook self-deep-sixed
due to the failure of their gold rush land grab.

And if this occurs
if Facebook simply poofs and vanishes
due to the failure of their gold rush land grab
or dissipates into ether through the sublimation process
then, oh how I will miss those birthday wall posts.
The utterly unequivocal birthday wall posts.
Those Birthday wall posts.  When someone from each and every era of your life emerges from the digital woodwork in order to wish you happiness.

Birthdays can be scary,
Birthdays can be strange,
Birthday can even be lonely,
Wrought with fear and loss and longing and dissatisfaction,
due to everything you have thus far failed to achieve of obtain.

But when your friends
from each and every era of your life
and time zones all around the globe
and zones south of the equator
where the leaves are turning red and gold,

When your family your former classmates, your colleagues and even your acquaintances all take the time to post a Happy Birthday
then that is a truly Happy Birthday
it is, in fact, the kind of Happy Birthday
that makes me hope that Doug Rushkoff
is wrong about the end of Facebook
or at least, makes me wish that Facebook would
dispense with the vanity domain concept
and go back to the old ways
of random numerically coded domains.

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To Do List’s Everpresence

Published
by
s000z
 on June 5, 2009
. 0 Comments

  1. Watch the Kids in the Hall, “Seven Things to Do”  video sketch on You Tube because my boyfriend emailed it to me yesterday, insisting that I actually watch this one because watching it will change my life.
  2. Update blog with meta-ironic post embedding code at the bottom so curious readers have the option of viewing said life changing You Tube vid.
  3. Update yesterday’s To Do List by adding those one-point-five items to today’s To Do List.
  4. Add five-point-five new items to today’s To Do List.
  5. Make serendipitous bug discovery when trying to update To Do List blog entry, realizing that automatically updating numbered sequential To Do Lists both does and does not work on this particular edition of WordPress.
  6. Wonder whether or not I will have time to report this bug to the WordPress forum.
  7. Decide not report the bug to the WP forum on the grounds that the problem automatically resolved itself soon as I hit “save.” Perhaps I will, at some point, update to the current and considerably less-buggy edition of WordPress but I tried this update twice already and failed because I didn’t know what I was doing and reading the instructions on what to do is not on my current To Do list.

Un-disclaimer: Despite the glib context of this supposedly sage sermon I just delivered, I am actually a firm believer in the necessity of the To Do List. The trick is in making one that is actually doable. There are tactio visual and digital visual types and digital and analog (ie pen and paper) systems to accommodate. My fav analog systems are put out the by Levenger company and fav digital systems are all about my iCal, which I use to manage all these To-Dos day in, day out. I’m also going to use the opportunity to plug my buddy Thomas Huynh’s digital To Do template. Thomas also happens to be the founder of one of my all time favorite websites, Sonshi.com. It is a Sun Tzu strategy website.

During the course of writing this my curiosity got the better of me, I sought out and check out some To Do List sites I discovered:

To Do List Blog - They actually have list slams in SanFran.  I want to be there, like NOW.

Ta Da List – Has an iphone app.  I don’t have an iphone, tho.  Would be interested in learning more if anyone else has tried it out.

Remember the Milk – Another iphone app.  Ditto what I said about the previous one.  And yes I’ll get me an iphone one of these days.

The Online CEO – This one gives me the creeps.  You use points to keep track in effort to ‘motivate’ yourself.  But then you have to motivate yourself to tally up the points.  (At least in my case that’s what would happen)

iGoogle – Of course what would a To Do List, list be without the iGoogle To Do List.  While the tasks I add to my iGoogle list tend to get neglected and ignored, there are others who live by it.  Although I don’t use their To Do List, iGoogle is pretty amazing and I still make regular use of it.  In fact, righteous Blogeratti, Arianna Huffington –whose blog I regularly contribute to– is now one of iGoogle’s newest champions.

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