Bob Dylan a Believer? Believe him …: “Well, I am a true believer,” Dylan replied [ in 2009] . [As the years pass, more comes to light about one of my early folk heroes and his faith. Most don’t know that Dylan recorded three Christian albums, was known to be a member of a Christian church, and married his backup gospel singer. Like all of us, Dylan has at time struggled with his faith but now, relatively late in his life, we have the above reaffirmation. My favorite Christian song is his “You Gotta Serve Somebody” [Video here] off of “Slow Train Coming”. – JS]
Political Grit > Meet Tom Cotton, from Yell County, Arkansas, near Dardanelle: [This whole story is a must-read, the story of a man of honor who gave up much to serve his country, to be a veteran, and to come home and see if he can serve his people in the political field. Would that we had a super majority of more Congressmen like him! – JS]
Are Car Companies Going the Way of Public Utilities? Why were these executives standing in lock step with the president? Quite simply, in the wake of the bailouts and ownership restructuring led by the federal government, they are creatures of national political priorities. They are no longer beholding to the desires or preferences of consumers. This shift from a consumer-driven business model to a government-directed one isn't wholly unprecedented. Electric utilities became regulated public utilities decades ago. So were traditional telephone companies until unregulated wireless technologies upended the entire communications industry.
Saturday night Kabuki bickerfest: Fast-forward past the sound and fury…The debt ceiling is going up. Government is getting bigger. Real spending cuts are getting kicked down the can. Entitlement reform is going nowhere. Reid and McConnell will dilute Boehner’s already diluted plan behind closed doors. And everyone in Washington will rush to take credit for nothing much. What a, uh, Surprise: [The Original Tea Party Turncoat] Scott Brown Says He’d Support the Reid Debt Plan
Reid Filibusters His Own Debt Bill: Senate Republicans want a 60-vote threshold for a debt-limit bill to pass the chamber, but it's actually Democrats who are enforcing the filibuster on their own legislation, insisting on delaying a vote until 1 a.m. Sunday morning. Republicans offered to let the vote happen Friday night, just minutes after the chamber voted to halt a House Republican bill. All sides expect Democrats' bill will fail too, and the GOP said senators might as well kill both at the same time so that negotiations could move on to a compromise. [Only in America could a politician rant and rave about obstructionist opponents as he obstructs his own bill and takes us closer to the brink. He probably doesn’t want to admit he doesn’t have the votes to pass it. – JS]
The Myth of Bi-Partisan: The entire near solar system is begging and pleading for Washington to exercise a concept known as "bipartisanship." By "bipartisan" they mean, of course "non-partisan" as in "without regard to political party." … When you hear cable news anchors bemoan the inability of the two parties to play nicely one with the other ask yourself what we call systems which don't have two contentious political parties. Dictatorship.
Heretical Thought: The System Is Working: But to a few of us simpler types, this little impasse in congressional halls demonstrates that the system is functioning, and not functioning, just as the writers of the Federalist Papers and the framers of the Constitution designed it. It's called a system of divided government, and by design it is supposed to work against itself as power checks power till somehow this Rube Goldberg treadmill clanks out the Will of the People. [By the way, our economy has usually done best when there was in deadlock in Washington because those who create jobs knew that there shouldn’t be something horribly negative on the horizon. – JS]
No comments:
Post a Comment