Open Thread
One year ago, representatives of progressive college students across America came together at the Roosevelt Policy Expo in DC and at the FDR Home in Hyde Park, NY, to discuss the most pressing issues facing our generation.After setting ourselves three challenges, we returned back to our college and university campuses and performed a year's worth of public policy research. We held conferences, conducted public fora, got small groups together for public policy brainstorming sessions, wrote papers and theses, and met with extracurricular groups. As the year came to a close, we selected the best 25 ideas that we wanted to bring to the public policy discussion.
I spent a couple of hours this afternoon reading through TRI's ideas, and I was very impressed. Given that my Reagan era generation focused on making as much personal money and not a lot on how we could make things better for all of us, it's refreshing to see politically engaged and committed young people thinking bigger picture.
What do you think of their ideas?
where the hell is public transit?
http://www.netflix.com/Movie/Giuliani_Time/70051626?trkid=104387
A new doc about Rudy ... I find the customer reviews interesting
Okay. Now I have to join the folks who find this new comment app buggy.
http://www.netflix.com/Movie/Giuliani_Time/70051626?trkid=104387
A new doc about Rudy ... I find the customer reviews interesting.
Trilogy
They do have some good ideas, especially for working families. Om the energy crisis---basically the same approach as today, a piecemeal approach that won't change much of anything. We need a big picture approach that focuses on conservation and a complete overhaul of our way of living. And nuclear power should stay out until we figure out a responsible way to handle the waste and the enormous start up costs.
Saturday, July 07, 2007
Frank Rich: A Profile in Cowardice
There was never any question that President Bush would grant amnesty to Scooter Libby, the man who knows too much about the lies told to sell the war in Iraq. The only questions were when, and how, Mr. Bush would buy Mr. Libby’s silence. Now we have the answers, and they’re at least as incriminating as the act itself. They reveal the continued ferocity of a White House cover-up and expose the true character of a commander in chief whose tough-guy shtick can no longer camouflage his fundamental cowardice.
The timing of the president’s Libby intervention was a surprise. Many assumed he would mimic the sleazy 11th-hour examples of most recent vintage: his father’s pardon of six Iran-contra defendants who might have dragged him into that scandal, and Bill Clinton’s pardon of the tax fugitive Marc Rich, the former husband of a major campaign contributor and the former client of none other than the ubiquitous Mr. Libby.
But the ever-impetuous current President Bush acted 18 months before his scheduled eviction from the White House. Even more surprising, he did so when the Titanic that is his presidency had just hit two fresh icebergs, the demise of the immigration bill and the growing revolt of Republican senators against his strategy in Iraq.
That Mr. Bush, already suffering historically low approval ratings, would invite another hit has been attributed in Washington to his desire to placate what remains of his base. By this logic, he had nothing left to lose. He didn’t care if he looked like an utter hypocrite, giving his crony a freer ride than Paris Hilton and violating the white-collar sentencing guidelines set by his own administration. He had to throw a bone to the last grumpy old white guys watching Bill O’Reilly in a bunker.
But if those die-hards haven’t deserted him by now, why would Mr. Libby’s incarceration be the final straw? They certainly weren’t whipped into a frenzy by coverage on Fox News, which tended to minimize the leak case as a non-event. Mr. Libby, faceless and voiceless to most Americans, is no Ollie North, and he provoked no right-wing firestorm akin to the uproars over Terri Schiavo, Harriet Miers or “amnesty” for illegal immigrants.
The only people clamoring for Mr. Libby’s freedom were the pundits who still believe that Saddam secured uranium in Africa and who still hope that any exoneration of Mr. Libby might make them look less like dupes for aiding and abetting the hyped case for war. That select group is not the Republican base so much as a roster of the past, present and future holders of quasi-academic titles at neocon think tanks like the American Enterprise Institute.
A member here. Chapters of the Roosevelt Institution also provide symposiums at their universities on their public policy research - we've had a few published at our chapter in UGA, along with some postings in The Economist and the Chicago Sun-Times (though they're neither here nor there in the scheme of things - more like getting the word out). Members are idealists, no question, but I've heard some pretty damn good and subversive ideas out of them. And, to say the least, we've grabbed the attention of at least a few congressmen (e.g. Sen. Isakson - R), which is always nice.
The premise of it all is sound - if nothing else, to stall corruption of the heart.
the New Idea of Earth Ball Abodes & Greenhouses
For All Earth Citizens Around OUR Earth in Need... is missing...
To read about it go here... Help Create, Build & Grow Em...
http://www.EarthBall.org
I can't wait to move into mine & the sooner the better
.
New York gets the short end of the stick again
on domestic security. Al Gore tells it like it is.
BaScOmBe @7-
Thanks fer allowin' us to dodge the NYT premium subscription wall!
TR would say they're bully.
Bush commuted Libby's sentence, and will pardon him, because it's his way of telling the rest of us to fuck off. After 6 1/2 years, we know him well enough to know that.
Hey folks, The President That Wouldn't Die walks again!
Nixon was disappointed with the selection of Thompson, whom he called "dumb as hell." The president did not think Thompson was skilled enough to interrogate unfriendly witnesses and would be outsmarted by the committee's Democratic counsel.
This assessment comes from audio tapes of White House conversations recently reviewed by The Associated Press at the National Archives in College Park, Md., and transcripts of those discussions that are published in "Abuse of Power: The New Watergate Tapes," by historian Stanley Kutler.
"Oh s---, that kid," Nixon said when told by his chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman, of Thompson's appointment on Feb. 22, 1973.
"Well, we're stuck with him," Haldeman said.
On the topic of making things better - - I saw Sicko today. Everybody should go see that movie. I work in a doctor's office and I can tell you, everything Moore says about insurance companies is true. We all need to be writing to our law makers to get them to take some power away from the insurance companies (if nothing else).
Go see Sicko and take a few friends with you. Then go home and contact your legislators.
you in your lifetime will never seenational health care in america health care and everything else that rakes in the bucks belongs to the zionest and thugs who run this country, after this war their wont be enough money left for even social security , but its all been planned , the elimination of the unions the middle class your rights to an honest voteing system the law the factorys they own you and they planned it all over the yrs we have been subverted by our own government !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Here are the signs I put up today:
http://freewayblogger.blogspot.com/2007/07/sacramento.html
...rhubarb rhubarb...
...cactus cactus...
vomit vomit
The more I read of tyree, the more I agree with him.
Anyone go to a LiveEarth party tonight? I did. I met some nice people and some committed ones, but for some reason the requisite networkers (one of whom had her children passing out business cards to everyone) and the usual there's-one-in-every-crowd sexual pervert kind of undid the happiness for me. Even with a crowd that was supposed to be aware and enlightened, you find the same opportunists doing their dirty work, dragging the rest of us down. Damn it. Remind me to never go to another party...I think I'll just hole up like Salvador Dali (or the Unibomber, if you prefer) and avoid real-life humanity for good.
Porn company to make "Gay Bomb" film. Starring Jimmy-Jeff Gannon, and William Poindexter as The Rear Admiral.
tyree, it was a reference to PLA radio. Subscribe here -
http://www.phonelosers.org/rss.xml
It's pretty hillarious most often. Check it out!!!! And of course, the owner apparently is a big Weird Al fan ...
ok stan i just thought since everyone was useing two words id use the ones that remind me of how i feel about this government ,
I now see your message tyree, and I must say that I agree with it.
anyway its late ill check it out in the morning even old farts sleep sometimes!night all ,
ok stan g nite!
PP @ 3 -
> Okay. Now I have to join the folks who find this new comment app buggy.
Yeah! Like I thought that when I said "trilogy" that I was actually commenting in the 3rd. comment on this thread!!!!
test
Five years in Guantanamo. http://www.alternet.org/rights/55993/
I know that Jon Stewart flinches from the comparisons of this administration, Dick Cheney's administration, to the NAZI's of the 1930's and early 40's. I'm sorry, but I can find no other correlation that matches what these people have done, and when they themselves adopt the terminolgy of the NAZI party for torture, then the comparison is fair and justified.
Many asked after WWII how the German people could have allowed the attrocities that occurred in Germany. Many have assumed that most people didn't know. We don't have that excuse. We do KNOW, and yet the evil is allowed to continue unabated.
Dick Cheney and George Bush have not only tortured the prisoners in Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and all of the other prisons they have set up all over the world, they may actually have killed the Constitution of the United States. If this is not stopped, if these evil doers are not impeached and prosecuted as traitors, America will never be the great nation it once was.
How much longer must we wait on JUSTICE???? Justice is NOT letting the clock run out. That is cowardice. These people have broken OUR laws, trampled OUR Constitution, overthrown OUR system of government, and they must be brought to JUSTICE!!!!
Is anyone else having difficulty connecting to Huffington Post?
"How fortunate for governments that the people that they administer don't think."....Adolph Hitler
"The victor will never be asked if he told the truth."....Adolph Hitler
...maybe bush has read a book.
Blair wanted to resign before Iraq war: former press chief
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070707/wl_uk_afp/britainpoliticsblair_0707...
Hey everybody. Get ready for a "new" way to pay for IraqNam, thanks in part to Al Gore. Political minds are abuzz with the idea of a new tax system to pound what's left out of the middleclass.....the Carbon Tax!!!
I have been reading that the white house is telling one of it aides not to anser a supeona. I thought that was against the law. Im not answearing any from now on
Nuke power? WRONG
Ethanol? WRONG
And no mention of the biggest contributing factor to the climate crisis--our consumption of meat.
Sounds like the same old same old. Slow, safe, baby steps that won't make a bit of difference.
OK, only a couple of people here actually checked out the Roosevelt Institution website. Yes, we are knee deep in muck, but the only way to get out is to look ahead.
From the people who did read the website, I got a sense of embarrassment by the "idealism". Hey, this country would not exist without idealism and in my opinion our national disdain for it is the cause of our problems today. There are some very good ideas here that could really help set us back on the right path. The Social Capital Block Grants, were particularly interesting. We forget that in spite of everything, humans have an innate desire to connect with and help one another, that governments usually ignore or work against (maybe because they sense a threat to their power.) Humans will not thrive when governments exist to fulfill all of our needs. But things get a lot better when government supports us in helping our neighbors to fulfill their own needs. Social groups that involve citizens helping their neighbors should be nurtured. Likewise, small businesses should be encouraged, supported and rewarded for providing good benefits to their employees. After decades of the "greed is good" mantra, we need to be led to the truth that when we help other people, we ourselves, benefit greatly.
I read it all.
Some of it, a lot of it, is good.
But, as long as it includes Nukes, Ethanol, and refuses to mention the huge role agribiz and the consumption of meat play in global warming, it''s just another slomo project that will have zero positive affect.
If you want to impress the world, be impressive and daring, don't try and please everyone hoping to unite.
Look what Cindy's doing!
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070708/ap_on_el_ho/cindy_sheehan_pelosi
I hope Nancy is listening...
What were the 80's? After the 60's and 70's, they were a huge disappointment. All I ever think of is: yuppies, d.i.n.k.'s, power lunches, power suits (shoulder pads for ladies)/power ties, BIG BIG hair, very very extremely bad music, bad taste in general, young republicans, "Real Men Don't Eat Quiche", and a whole lot of other garbage.
Comments are closed on this entry