Civil Discourse Now

Where the far left and far right overlap for fun and enlightenment

November 2013 Blog Posts (18)

Stutz Bearcats and today's Show, live from Stutz I in Indy.

   Today we shall stream live, from 11 am to 1 pm, from the Stutz Building I, at 212 West 10th Street, Indianapolis. The Stutz Bearcat was manufactured in the complex, and even competed in the Indianapolis 500. The Stutz Artists Association is the largest association of working artists in Indiana. There are a lot of studios, but also spaces for other small- and mid-sized businesses in the two-building complex, refurbished, owned and managed by Indianapolis commercial developer Turned…

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Added by Mark Small on November 30, 2013 at 6:47am — No Comments

"Say No to TIFS in Broad Ripple"? NO! Say "no" to TIFs anywhere.

   Acronyms are handy. They short-hand complex topics. If a person, in a confident voice, throws three or four acronyms into a conversation, some people are more prone to accept the person's opinion as informed. If the person also quotes representatives of several prominent forces in a community, the person's statements on the given topic appear, on surface, validated.

   There is a FaceBook page captioned "Say No to TIFs in Broad Ripple." TIFs are Tax-Increment Finance districts. As…

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Added by Mark Small on November 29, 2013 at 8:23am — No Comments

TIFs: we cannot develop WITHOUT them?

   Tax-Increment Financing districts ("TIFs") were developed in California in the 1950s. The idea was to infuse areas desperate for investment with public funds. A specific area would be designated as a TIF. By "specific," I mean specific blocks would be designated as within the boundaries of that TIF's "footprint." Projects would be designed for the TIF. Bonds would be floated by (most often) the municipal government of the place in which the TIF was to be created. Money from the bonds…

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Added by Mark Small on November 28, 2013 at 8:16am — No Comments

Today's Show from Ramada Inn-East: Gary Welsh on JFK; St. Louis psychic Demarus Harris; Matt Stone of "Indy Student"

We'll stream live, from 11 am to 1 pm from Ramada Inn Indy-East.

Added by Mark Small on November 23, 2013 at 7:40am — No Comments

3 Deaths on November 22, 1963.

   Fifty years ago on this date, as we all know from massive coverage of acknowledgment of the event, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. The cliche is true for me: I remember where I was and what happened. Mrs. Coleford was our third-grade teacher at New London Elementary School. Early afternoon, Mr. Kincaid, the principal, entered our classroom. Mrs. Coleford was one of my favorite elementary school teachers. She was kind, patient and made school interesting. Mr.…

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Added by Mark Small on November 22, 2013 at 7:23am — No Comments

Why make a sequel to "It's a Wonderful Life"?

   An item on Yahoo reports "It's a Wonderful Life" will have a sequel. The 1946 film, directed by Frank Capra, starred Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed. The American Film Institute named it one of the 100 Best Films made.

   There is no mention of Capra in the article. There is mention, however, of the way in which the producers want to capture the original spirit of the 1946 flick. Apparently George Bailey's children relive the concept of what the world would be like had one or more of…

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Added by Mark Small on November 19, 2013 at 7:45am — No Comments

Monon Bell Game: tomorrow's Show, streamed from Moore's Bar, 11 am to 1 pm.

   Tomorrow's Show will stream live from Moore's Bar, 17 South Indiana, in beautiful Greencastle, Indiana. DePauw University will host Wabash College, a school of cretinous misogynists located in Crawfordsville.

   Wabash has won the past four meetings. There use to be a debate each year, in a series known as the Monon Bell debates. Those debates were after my time. We debated Wabash, at tournaments and in audience settings, and won. I do not recall a loss to Wabash. The Monon Bell…

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Added by Mark Small on November 15, 2013 at 7:03am — No Comments

Trans-Pacific Partnership: one means by which we may lose still more jobs in the name of corporate profit.

   In Salt Lake City, from November 19 to 24, chief negotiators will meet for a summit on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, described by one observer as "the largest-ever economic treaty, encompassing nations representing more than 40 per cent of the world's GDP."  "Pivotal Trans-Pacific Partnership Section Revealed," PopularResistance.org, 11/13/09. When one has to find out details of trade treaties from Wikileaks, one is left with a skeptical opinion of what the latest treaty holds.

  …

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Added by Mark Small on November 14, 2013 at 7:31am — 1 Comment

Alternative Monon Bell "stag" at Broad Ripple Tavern at 5 p.m.

   Alums of DePauw and alums of Wabash should gather at the Broad Ripple Tavern around 5 p.m. as a counter to the males-only "stag" held at about the same time at the Murat. DePauw alumnae and Wabash transgender alums are welcome to attend the informal gathering at 735 Broad Ripple Avenue. The same cannot be said about the "stag," an event that was on hiatus from the late 1980s until a couple of years ago. Wear your school colors, or not. Saturday the game will be played at Blackstock…

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Added by Mark Small on November 13, 2013 at 7:13am — No Comments

Part II: An alternative to The Monon Bell "stag" on November 13 at Broad Ripple Tavern..

   Private colleges have more latitude, in some respects, than public universities. Race is not part of that latitude. Bob Jones University originally did not accept African-Americans for enrollment. In 1970 BJU softened that position. Black students were accepted for enrollment, but interracial dating was prohibited. Students guilty of such conduct could be expelled. Even membership in an organization that espoused a belief that interracial dating should be allowed subjected a student to…

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Added by Mark Small on November 12, 2013 at 7:21am — No Comments

DePauw alums! Wabash alums! Heed the call for this Wednesday at BRT!

   This Saturday is the Monon Bell Game, the annual contest between the football teams of DePauw University and Wabash College. I graduated from DePauw. As I wrote last week, I received an e-mail invitation from the DePauw Alumni Association to the Monon Bell Stag, a party held, this year at the Murat, in which drinks are served, dinner had and humorous speakers speak. The "stag" did not occur for about a dozen years. Perhaps the notion of an all-male event for alumni of two schools, one of…

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Added by Mark Small on November 11, 2013 at 7:04am — No Comments

Cuts in military spending would save domestic programs, and would not jeopardize national defense.

   In a column in "The Washington Post," Fareed Zakaria quotes former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates as saying there are more members of military marching bands than members of the United States foreign service. The United States spends more than the next seventeen countries most generous to their defense budgets.

   In the last couple years' debates on the national deficit, much has been made of cuts to "entitlements." Implicit in the label "entitlements" is the notion people are…

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Added by Mark Small on November 10, 2013 at 6:55am — 1 Comment

Today's Show: White River Yacht Club, 1400 East 74th Street, a celebration of veterans and no politics.

   I moved to Broad Ripple in 1987, at the start of my second year of law school. There are aspects of Broad Ripple one must live here to understand. For example, for several years I thought Christ the King was a portable casino under a big tent. Also, I never understood how to find Conner's Pub, only that under certain circumstances, I ended up there, sort of like explorers stumbled onto Shangri-la, but without the mountains and snow and with a juke box heavy on my kind of music as beer was…

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Added by Mark Small on November 9, 2013 at 6:41am — No Comments

Veterans and hypocrisy.

   My father was vague about what he did in the years 1929 to about 1935. He maintained several stories that, when later I considered them, were inconsistent or simply did not make sense. He said he served in the United States Army, variously as an artillery person or a pilot of biplanes. Enlistment in the military was something many men in the depression that hit agricultural communities of the United States and in the Later Great Depression sought out. In the military, one had a job, three…

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Added by Mark Small on November 8, 2013 at 7:16am — No Comments

Veterans Day show, a bad M*A*S*H episode remembered, and the White River Yacht Club from 11 am to 1 pm.

   In an episode pf M*A*SH, Hawkeye becomes angry at an infantry officer. The officer insists on taking his unit back up into the hills to recover the bodies of members of his unit killed in battle the previous night. Hawkeye emphasizes the pointlessness in risking lives for those already dead. When I saw the episode---not as a re-run, but I have seen it since---I had worked construction, during school breaks, with a veteran of the Korean War (or, more accurately in history books, "police…

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Added by Mark Small on November 7, 2013 at 6:42am — No Comments

Matt Stone, blogger at "Indy Student," to join CDN on a more regular basis.

   Matt Stone has been a guest panelist every few weeks since our podcast began in early 2011. Last Saturday our Show focused on breast cancer. Matt did an excellent interview of his mother, a breast cancer survivor, and his sister. Matt blogged, over at his blog site "Indy Student," about the difficulty an interview of such a personal nature poses. You can listen to the interview, and the entire Show, on the Civil Discourse Now Face Book page, Live365, or at Indiana Talks. Our three guest…

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Added by Mark Small on November 5, 2013 at 6:35am — No Comments

Veterans' Day show: from the White River Yacht Club.

   A couple of weeks ago, someone asked me why Veterans' Day traditionally was celebrated on November 11. The reason is linked to the official end of World War I. The Treaty of Versailles took effect on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918. Some people who were in the trenches in Europe described how the sounds of gunfire suddenly came to a stop. World War I was fully mechanized brutality that wiped out a generation in Britain, France, Germany and the other…

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Added by Mark Small on November 4, 2013 at 7:16am — No Comments

November 2 Show: breast cancer awareness with survivors and a medical school researcher mfrom Mike's Pub, 5135 South Emerson.

   Breast cancer hits many people. On Saturday, November 2, from 11 am to 1 pm, Civil Discourse Now will stream live from Mike's Pub at 5135 South Emerson Avenue. Our focal topic will be breast cancer. Several breast cancer survivors will be guests. Also, skyping in from the Southern Illinois University School of Medicine, will be Randolph Elble, Ph.D., who conducts research at the school's Simmons Cancer Institute and Department of Pharmacology.  

Added by Mark Small on November 2, 2013 at 5:52am — No Comments

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