Archive for September, 2013
Friday Open Thread 9.13.13
Happy Friday the 13th. Hopefully nothing unlucky has happened to you today.
CNN: “With the clock ticking towards two crucial deadlines, a new national poll indicates congressional Republicans would shoulder more blame than President Barack Obama for a possible government shutdown. [..] Only a third would consider President Barack Obama responsible for a shutdown, with 51% pointing a finger at the GOP – up from 40% who felt that way earlier this year.”
“Clueless and running on fragments of family lore” is this the future of the GOP?
The GOP is as out of gas as any political party in American history (except possibly the Prohibition Party). Clearly in the absence of some strategy change, the party’s future isn’t bright. Neither, judging by Meghan McCain, are the next wave of conservative pundits. McCain, who’s celebrity status rests on the fact that her Dad got trounced in a Presidential election, is taking up the mantle of the party’s party girl in a new cable TV series.
The series, which debuts on the new network Pivot TV this Saturday, is a combination talk show and unscripted series — half “The View,” half “Sarah Palin’s Alaska.” It follows the exploits of one Meghan McCain, the daughter of the current U.S. senator from Arizona and one-time presidential nominee John McCain; she alternates between interviewing her guest and showing a slice of what it is like to be the daughter of a U.S. senator who lost the presidency in a landslide. She has been given 30 minutes a week on an aspirant cable network to prove that she has nothing to say.
Prior to the release of her current series, Meghan McCain was a columnist for the Daily Beast; her columns for the site, for which her last piece ran shortly after the last presidential election, included such pieces as “Yes, I Wear Fake Hair” and “The GOP’s House Hottie.” She interviewed Snooki, too!
How Rockwood Mansion will cost you money, thanks to Tom Gordon
We don’t normally get generous offers to fix country property like we have with Rockwood Mansion, so for Tom Gordon and his goons to fight it because of some perceived threat to organized labor is beyond ridiculous.
My side project
While I was away from political blogging this summer, I started a side project that deals with an obsession of mine – employee engagement. In addition to having written a self published book on the subject of employee engagement, I teach an organizational behavior class each year at Goldey Beacom that deals with the topic. The blog: exit119a is an attempt to put the theories I discuss in class under real world microscope. This is how I describe it in the “About” section….
DL Get Together! (aka Liberally Drinking)
It’s been a while since we’ve held one of these, so… Let’s get together!
Thursday, September 19th
7 pm
Iron Hill Brewery
(on the Wilmington Riverfront)
All are welcome! Looking forward to seeing everyone!
Jeff Christopher gets his day in (Supreme) Court
Of course, the Delaware Supreme Court has no jurisdiction over Sheriffs because the Magna Carta BITCHES! (Hogg v. Dukes 1981), and also SHUT UP (JJ. v. Thelma 1975). Anyway, they are going through the motions of pretending that the court is calling the shots and not the people’s (and God’s) own chosen “highest ranking legal […]
Wednesday Open Thread 9.11.13
Regarding the President’s prime time speech last night, I agree that the speech probably should not have been given, but it had to be given to maintain the credible threat of force that is driving the diplomatic negotiations. So the speech itself, in my mind, was less important than reactions to the overall situation. And I think Andrew Sullivan and Booman best describe my thoughts:
That was one of the clearest, simplest and most moving presidential speeches to the nation I can imagine. It explained and it argued, point after point. Everything the president said extemporaneously at the post-G20 presser was touched on, made terser, more elegant and more persuasive. […]
I’m tired of the eye-rolling and the easy nit-picking of the president’s leadership on this over the last few weeks. The truth is: his threat of war galvanized the world and America, raised the profile of the issue of chemical weapons more powerfully than ever before, ensured that this atrocity would not be easily ignored and fostered a diplomatic initiative to resolve the issue without use of arms. All the objectives he has said he wanted from the get-go are now within reach, and the threat of military force – even if implicit – remains.
Yes, it’s been messy. A more cautious president would have ducked it. Knowing full well it could scramble his presidency, Obama nonetheless believed that stopping chemical weapons use is worth it – for the long run, and for Americans as well as Syrians. Putin understands this as well. Those chemical weapons, if uncontrolled, could easily slip into the hands of rebels whose second target, after Assad and the Alawites and the Christians, would be Russia.
This emphatically does not solve the Syria implosion. But Obama has never promised to. What it does offer is a nonviolent way toward taking the chemical weapons issue off the table. Just because we cannot solve everything does not mean we cannot solve something. And the core truth is that without Obama’s willingness to go out on a precarious limb, we would not have that opportunity.
The money quote for me, apart from the deeply moving passage about poison gas use at the end, was his description of a letter from a service-member who told him, “We should not be the world’s policeman.” President Obama said, quite simply: “I agree.” And those on the far right who are accusing him of ceding the Middle East to Russia are half-right and yet completely wrong. What this remarkable breakthrough has brought about is a possible end to the dynamic in which America is both blamed for all the evils in the world and then also blamed for not stopping all of them. We desperately need to rebuild international cooperation to relieve us of that impossible burden in a cycle that can only hurt us and the West again and again.
In honor of the fallen on September 11, 2001
Never forget. Gordon M. Aamoth, Jr. Edelmiro Abad Maria Rose Abad Andrew Anthony Abate Vincent Abate Laurence Christopher Abel William F. Abrahamson Richard Anthony Aceto Jesus Acevedo Rescand Heinrich Bernhard Ackermann Paul Acquaviva Donald LaRoy Adams Patrick Adams Shannon Lewis Adams Stephen George Adams Ignatius Udo Adanga Christy A. Addamo Terence E. Adderley, Jr. Sophia […]
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