Good morning, folks. Mark David Chapman is up for parole again this week. Now, your morning constitutional: Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard will remain prime minister, although with a minority government, after winning the support of two key independent MPs. However, six months after its election, Iraq still has yet to form a government, which one minister is suggesting may be encouraging insurgents. The Obama administration is pressing Congress to stimulate the economy with $50B in transportation spending, $100B business tax credit, and a tax write-off for capital investments. The ideological polarization of the current Supreme Court...
Continue reading...September 2010
Sharron Angle versus Alvin Greene
Sharron Angle does not believe unemployment insurance helps anyone. In an interview with conservative radio talk show host Heidi Harris (she really does only interview with conservatives, and it really does seem it’s only radio), she raised her game a little from before, where she just claimed that unemployment benefits “spoil” the unemployed: “People don’t want to be unemployed,” she explained. “They want to have real, full-time, permanent jobs with a future. That’s what they want, and we need to create that climate in Washington, D.C. that encourages businesses to create those full-time, permanent jobs with a...
Continue reading..."Well, excited and scared."
Happy Friday! Congratulations, you’ve almost made it to the long weekend. It’s an especially eventful Friday for me, because today happens to be the last day at both my current job and my current apartment. Neither of these are bad things, and in fact I’m excited about changes on both fronts. But at the same time, the transitions feel bittersweet. I like to blame my mixed emotions on being a Libra: I always have a lot of feelings even about a single situation. I know people who wholeheartedly embrace big changes and jump headfirst into the unknown,...
Continue reading...New York Times Columnist of the Day
If you’re one of the four-or-so frequent readers of this here blog, chances are you also occasionally check out the New York Times op-ed page. You may even know the names: Thomas “Friedman’s Just Another Word For Nothing Left to Lose” Friedman, Gail “The Colander” Collins, Nicholas “The Dark Crystal” Kristof, &c. This is a daily feature dedicated to these folks: one line that is either awesome, funny, insightful, intelligent, ridiculous, or utterly divorced from reality. I hope you enjoy. Today\’s is from Roger \”Life of the Party\” Cohen, who in his column \”Obama\’s Post-Iraq World,\” writes:...
Continue reading...Morning Constitutional – Friday, 3 September 2010
Good morning, folks. A Malaysian man tried to bring 95 snakes on a plane. Now, your morning constitutional: The U.S. shed 54,000 jobs in August, raising the unemployment rate to 9.6% percent. The job losses were actually the result of public sector firing; while the private sector added 67,000 jobs, the Census let go of 114,000 temporary workers as state and local governments dropped 10,000. By historical standards, the labor market is actually recovering rapidly, as job growth began earlier than past recessions. Hurricane Earl is weakening as it approaches Massachusetts. The U.S. auto industry is smaller...
Continue reading...Arizona Governor Jan Brewer wants to … uh … keep being your governor. Or something.
[This post used to have a video that is no longer on the internet] Jan Brewer became the governor of Arizona last year when now-Secretary Janet Nepolitano left to join the Obama cabinet. She had been seen as a sort-of seat-filler since then, and there were plenty of Republicans waiting to jump into the primaries this year. Yet, in April she signed the infamous SB1070, the bill that would have given police special powers to enforce immigration (most of the law has been thrown out by a federal judge), and immediately became so popular she’s now the...
Continue reading...Poem of the Week
Most of the poems I\’ve posted here so far have been free verse– my usual preferred mode for both reading and writing poetry. But this is one of the best examples I\’ve seen of the complicated villanelle form: a 19 line poem consisting of five three-line stanzas followed by a concluding four-line stanza. Villanelles feature an ABA rhyme scheme, as well as two lines that repeat throughout, alternating as the last line of each stanza. Got that? Complex structure aside, it\’s a beautiful poem, the last stanza of which makes for a good mantra. Thanks to my...
Continue reading...Larry Sabato predicts huge wins for Republicans in November
Republicans are undoubtedly going to have a good November, but University of Virginia political science professor Larry Sabato makes a pretty bold claim: Given what we can see at this moment, Republicans have a good chance to win the House by picking up as many as 47 seats, net. This is a “net” number since the GOP will probably lose several of its own congressional districts in Delaware, Hawaii, and Louisiana. This estimate, which may be raised or lowered by Election Day, is based on a careful district-by-district analysis, plus electoral modeling based on trends in President Obama’s Gallup...
Continue reading..."You got the Belgians running Europe?"
Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s memoir is on sale today, alongside a lengthy profile/preview of the book in the Washington Post. Based on the tidbits from the profile, I may just have to snag A Journey: My Political Life (What an original and totally interesting title!). The Post piece mostly centers on the backstabbingly close relationship Blair had with his successor Gordon Brown. There’s this little tidbit regarding how Blair felt about Presidents Clinton and Bush, both of whom with which he shared close relationships. Blair first visited with George W. Bush at Camp David in...
Continue reading...Yes, it's hot outside, but the Potomac River is really not a good place to go swimming
As if we needed another reason to avoid swimming in the Potomac River, now we have to be afraid of…sharks? Willy Dean has an incredible fish tale to tell. On Tuesday, he caught a shark while on the Potomac River in St. Mary’s County, Md. Don’t believe him? He has the pictures to prove it. Dean put out a net Monday at Cornfield Harbor in the Potomac three miles north of Point Lookout with hopes of catching cow-nosed rays for a Solomons Island Marina biologist. When he checked Monday night everything seemed normal. But when he checked again Tuesday...
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