Chris Broussard

Never Give Up William Rivers Pitt You have to capture the mentality of the Red Sox fan. You start every season and every game almost completely sure that you will be beaten soundly. You lick your wounds and dust yourself off and maybe cry a little into your pillow. But you always, always think to yourself, "This could be it. This could be the year." You do it because you want to be there at the turning of the tide. When that day does dawn, when some October night in a time to come absorbs the victory roar of people who have watched great-grandfathers and grandfathers and fathers live entire lives and die unfulfilled, when the Boston Red Sox finally win that championship, it will have been worth every moment of pain and disappointment. For the Boston Red Sox, and for those who followed them and never gave up on them through sixteen Presidents, Prohibition, Women's Suffrage, the Civil Rights Act, the introduction of the Big Bang theory, Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, the...

A Cherokee elder sitting with his grandchildren told them, “In every life there is a terrible fight – a fight between two wolves. One is evil: he is fear, anger, envy, greed, arrogance, self-pity, resentment, and deceit. The other is good: joy, serenity, humility, confidence, generosity, truth, gentleness, and compassion.” A child asked, “Grandfather, which wolf will win?” The elder looked him in the eye. “The one you feed.”

From Bruderhof's Daily Dig : As I read the triumphant headlines in the newspapers day after day--“U.S. Pounds Iraq from Air”--and saw the pictures of missiles streaking into Iraq, I could not help but hear the silent screams of all the little Iraqi children in utero who were having their lives ripped from them...Yet the silence on this matter of abortions induced by war--silence in the church, in pro-life circles, and in peace and justice efforts--is thunderous. It is as if abortion for saving a person’s reputation is absolutely evil; abortion for saving a family’s economic life is absolutely evil; abortion for saving a person’s job is absolutely evil; abortion for saving a person from what he or she perceives to be an intolerable personal future is absolutely evil, but abortion to save oil fields for the present and future control and profit of American and British oil interests or to save the world from non-existent weapons of mass destruction or from a local dictator is mo...

Okay, I admit it. I’ve been pretty lax at posting anything here. The fact is that I’m so stressed out about the election that I’m trying to forget it as much as possible. Every day there’s news of voter manipulation, continuing chaos in Iraq, lying administrations and still, STILL, a 50% approval rating for the president. Bush supporters are extremely misinformed, according to a survey published last week by the Program on International Policy Attitudes and Knowledge Networks . You can read about it here . What’s most striking (and disturbing) about the report is that it finds that Bush supporters continue to believe things about the Bush administration that have been repeatedly proven untrue. Several theories have been presented to explain this. Al Franken calls it Cognitive Dissonance, asserting that people want to vote for Bush so they reject the truth to better sleep at night. Joe Conason says that after 9/11, Americans needed a hero, and George W. was that her...

"America is not always right, but America is always true...You have to express yourself, roll up your shirtsleeves and remember, the America we carry in our hearts is waiting." —Bruce Springsteen, Oct. 11, at the Vote For Change concert in Washington, D.C.

Always say what you feel, and do what you think is good and right. If I knew that today would be the last time I’d see you, I would hug you tight and pray the Lord be the keeper of your soul. If I knew that this would be the last time you pass through this door, I’d embrace you, kiss you, and call you back for one more. If I knew that this would be the last time I would hear your voice, I’d take hold of each word to be able to hear it over and over again. If I knew this is the last time I see you, I’d tell you I love you, and would not just assume foolishly you know it already. -- Gabriel Garcia Marquez

As a child, I never really liked “Alice in Wonderland.” Psychopathic playing cards, disappearing cats, time-challenged bunnies and mad hatters—it was all too much for me, and far too abstract. I was more of a Curious George person. A monkey in a room with a can of paint—this was something I could comprehend and relate to. Lately, though, I have found myself revisiting Alice’s Wonderland to gain some perspective on the current state of US politics. Most of the time I feel as though I, like Alice, have fallen down a rabbit hole and am now in some alternate reality where up is down, black is white and Republicans are for the working class while Democrats are for the effete, rich, snobbish elite. See? It makes no sense. Oh, there goes the rabbit! For a book I was researching once, I studied the confidence games used by hucksters throughout the centuries to separate the rubes from their money. Now, I stand at the edge of a crowd gathered around the grifter as he moves the shells b...

From Altercation: GEORGE W. BUSH (with Bill O'Reilly in 2000): "Well, I -- yeah, and I'm not so sure he (Jesus) addressed the death penalty itself in the New Testament. Maybe he did." THE GOSPEL OF JOHN; CHAPTER 8, VERSES 4-7:They say unto him, Master, this woman was taken in adultery, in the very act. Now Moses in the law commanded us, that such should be stoned: but what sayest thou? This they said, tempting him, that they might have to accuse him. But Jesus stooped down, and with his finger wrote on the ground, as though he heard them not. So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her. One element of the essential C-Plus Augustus that few people dare examine is the possibility that he's as ignorant of his professed Christianity as he of so many other important things in this world. I mean, that is one of the most famous passages in Christ's pub...