Saturday Open Thread [1.28.12]
It is a gorgeous day outside and hope that everyone is having some fun today. But if you are inside catching up on paperwork, reading or just looking through recipes for goodies to cook for Super Bowl Sunday (yawn), use this thread to talk about what interests you today or news we should be paying attention to.
First up, Mayor Cory Booker speaking about Gov. Christie’s call to put the civil rights of gay people to vote of NJ citizens:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4Z7tl7Vy8U[/youtube]
I want to know why we can’t get this guy to be Mayor of Wilmington. No matter though — this is the perfect response to the idea that we should put anyone’s civil rights to a vote.
Ryan Lizza has a great long piece in the New Yorker called, The Obama Memos, The making of a post-post-partisan Presidency. This is a fascinating read — Lizza got his hands on a big pile of Obama Administration memos and uses what he learns from these to show how the President’s original post-partisan idea became eventually not operative. This is a long piece, but worth reading. Lizza got his hands on a memo from Larry Summers and the economic advisors group that provides a roadmap to much of the Obama Administration’s legislative agenda. And that stimulus that was too small? That was on purpose and the reasoning behind that (and it looks more detailed than what could pass Congress) is shown here. There’s lots more, on the stimulus, on the health care fight and budget austerity there.
Ebony Magazine has an interview with Van Jones who talks about the OWS, why he left the White House and other topics. He has a book coming out on March — and something tells me that his group will be pretty visible during the Presidential campaign. At least, I hope so.
Jay Rosen is a must-read journalism critic, and he has posted his Brief Theory of the Republican Party, 2012:
A Brief Theory of the Republican Party: 2012
In so far as a political party in the United States can “decide” anything, the party decided not to have the fight it needed to have between reality-based Republicans and the other kind. And so it is having that fight now, during the 2012 election season, but in disguised form. The results are messy and confusing.
There’s more at the link.
Lastly and not least, is a great article from Beth Miller at the NJ on what an increased minimum wage would mean to folks who are (mostly) making minimum wage. Good on the NJ for giving folks who make minimum wage the chance to tell people what this means to them.
Tags: Open Thread
Oh my, I’ve been banned from batshitcrazypolitics.net. All for pointing out how much of a pseudo-intellectual Fay Voshell is. A fate worst than death.
For thousands of years conservatives have tried to solve their problems by expelling the Jews; nothing new here. It never seems to work though.
MJ: Don’t waste your time with them. You won’t find a more ignorant yet self-satisfied group of people without a great deal of searching.
MJ, you know the rules about vitriolic personal attacks. You liberals need to learn to play by the rules. Of course this is just the opinion of one out of the “ignorant yet self-satisfied group of people “.
Thanks, Geezer.
Cassandra here is a way to pass some time and enjoy a good British
political TV series. If you have Netflix it’s on streaming and the title is House of cards. I believe a person of your intelligence will not only enjoy it but find it interesting
Come on, Frank. Don Ayotte breaks DP’s rules against personal attacks every day.
This looks like a personal attack to me:
It’s your blog and you can ban who you want, but please stop pretending DP’s rules are consistently enforced. If a commenter had written the above comment about Don, Don would have deleted the comment… citing personal attack.
Don Ayotte is Delaware’s worst blogger… and you know it.
There was no vitriol, Frank, and you know it. I pointed out how much of an intellectual fraud Fay Voshell is, and because of that, she banned me. Like I said, a fate worst than death. Oh, I cried and cried all night because the pinheaded, pseudo-intellectual Fay Voshell banned me from your blog.
I’ve told some of the folks on here not to lecture me about whether I’m following the tenets of my religion or not. It’s not for a gentile to tell a Jew what is religiously right or wrong. As I told Fay in one of my comments, it would be like me telling Mitt Rmoney how to be a better Mormon just because I studied Mormonism. I’m sure you’d be offended if I told you how to be a better Christian/Buddist/Muslim/Animist/etc.
Thanks, TT! I’ve seen House of Cards, I don’t know how many times. It is an amazing piece of work probably all due to Ian Richardson’s incredibly dastardly turn as Francis Urquhart. But I couldn’t possibly comment. 😉
Here’s one for you — it is another British mini-series called State of Play. This one turns on the cat and mouse games between politicians and the press. Fantastic! Don’t know if it is on Netflix. But this one I own on DVD and can lend you if you like.
Love House of Cards. Let me know if you want to borrow the entire series – I have it on DVD.
House of Cards is on Netflix (seasons 1-3). I’ll have to check it out.
Interesting strategy. It looks like the republicans are going all in on obstruction between now and november. So divided government means no government as long as the Republicans control the legislative branch.
“Mitch McConnell: Senate Republicans Will Sign On To Case Against Obama Recess Appointments
On CNN’s State of the Union Sunday, Minority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell said Republicans would sign on to a case against President Obama’s recess appointments of Richard Cordray to head the CFPB as well as three members to the NLRB. Republicans would do so in the form of an amicus brief. In the meantime, Utah Sen. Mike Lee has promised to oppose all Obama appointees until the recess appointments are sorted out — an position McConnell refused to condemn on Sunday.”
Although, If Rebuplicans take the White House, I’m sure they would be able to pass laws to protect us from Sharia. Democrats are much more accommodating when they are in the congressional majority.
“I’m sure they would be able to pass laws to protect us from Sharia.”
But currently, Sharia law is only used for arbitration. Are they going to gut the arbitration laws?
It’s really about denying muslims the right to arbitrate civil matters. It will be a mess unless all religious based arbitration is banned (not a bad thing, mind you).
http://www.stanford.edu/group/sjir/pdf/Sharia_11.2.pdf
if you like House of Cards try “The Politicians Wife” filled with British irony and ending that would scare the shit out of Tony DeLuca:). Its a short series 3 episodes.
Also, The Ides of March is on VOD. Very good movie.