Etalkinghead

Overall, Obama’s State of the Union address impressed.

I was glad to have him tackle education more honestly than I’ve been used to with politicians, to the point of proposing the dismantling of the troublesome No Child Left Behind Act. Likewise, I am glad he stuck to his guns on the health care bill, while also offering concessions if they were practical and didn’t compromise the overall aim of the bill. On the environmental front, of course, he offered the good talk about the potential stimulating effects of renewable energy and expanded public transportation options on the economy and the potential for job growth. However, he never once mentioned the climate.

A former co-worker of mine rebutted to a point I made on that that Obama needs to switch the messaging to adapt to an anti-climate atmosphere. Republicans and their cohorts have been successful in re-branding “climate change” as a term tantamount to taxes and inconvenience and the death of jobs.

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I once had a single bumper stick that emblazoned my first car, a beat-up smurf-blue Chevy, that simply stated, “Little Red Riding Hood LIED.”

I grew up in an inner-city area. The only wild animals I ever saw were squirrels, pigeons and the occasional rat, and their wildness was in question. I never saw a deer or raccoon other than behind bars until I went away to college in a more rural and mountainous setting. My eyes opened up…

Before that, at my first university, I took a class in environmental and bio-medical ethics. I was assigned a project about wolves, which was the beginning of me embarking on some path I still haven’t quite finished traveling on. At the end of the semester, the professor, an animal biologist with a compassionate streak for his subjects, bought me a book on wolves as a gift to foster my new passion. As he put it in my hands, he said, “When you understand the wolves, the rest kind of all comes together…it’s like coming home to yourself.”

Wolves are not the only subject of my fascination with nature, but they definitely marked the beginning and the pinnacle of it.

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Here is what I wrote in April:

The Republican Party will experience it at the local and state levels first, as Tea Party candidates defeat conventional Republicans and win GOP nominations. Some of those Tea Partiers will be kooky, others will be single-issue ideologues. A few will be anti-immigrant, a smattering will be paranoid. Others will be very like the Republicans they beat.

In November most of the kooks, ideologues, nativists and paranoids will lose to a Democrat. That will cause anguished cries by establishment Republicans: “They cost us Kentucky! They are ruining our party.” The few crazies who win will be magnets for the media and their weird statements will cause embarrassment for the majority of responsible Republicans. After that, individual Tea Partiers – who are shown by research to be as sensible as any other politically involved Americans – will make individual decisions.

Whew, that was fast! Tea Partier Rand Paul won Kentucky’s Republican senatorial primary on June 18.

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“I am firm. You are obstinate. He is a pig-headed fool.” – Katherine Whitehorn

The making of a political deal is messy and crude. The debt ceiling deal was especially so. Tea party supporters took a lot of the abuse during the standoff. They were called just about everything by Democrats in Congress, a few of their fellow Republicans and liberals across the country. Late-night comedians and the mainstream media had a field day excoriating the tea partiers.

They called them crazy, Hobbits, zombies, vultures, bloodsuckers, dumb, robots, murderers, stupid, idiotic, Nazis, evil, delusional, racists, addicts, narrow-minded, imbeciles, extremists, devils, dogs, monsters, terrorists, know-nothings and several names that parents do not want their children to hear.

The descriptive language of left-leaning commentators was heard nightly on television as they tried to frame the debate in their terms. The tea parties did not care about framing. They cared about getting their way.

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Is Barack Obama’s calmness a mask hiding layers of uncertainty about his role as president? Is the President’s seemingly unflappable persona a cover for his frequent failure to use the full range of powers of his office? As others have pointed out, in utter frustration, the President too often offers the Republicans what they want before hard bargaining even begins. Why is this happening?

Both Jackie Robinson, who was the first black Major Leaguer and Obama, the first black President faced enormous pressure to avoid being labeled the “angry black man.”

Once Robinson demonstrated his great abilities, he became free to be as aggressive as any white player. The question for Obama is: can he free himself to aggressively and effectively employ the substantial leverage that his office bestows on him? My considered judgment is that it will take intense personal growth to accomplish that.

The reason is that Obama’s ability to remain calm and seemingly in control is, I believe, unlike Robinson’s self constraint.

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Even though I consider myself fairly low impact in most of my everyday practices, giving up the plastic straw was an oversight I didn’t finally address until fairly recently. I had been on the way to weaning myself slowly off of excess waste: bringing my own tupperware to restaurants to pack leftovers (and simply not eating out as much), refusing paper and plastic bags in favor of my own canvas ones, and bringing my own reusable mugs and cutlery in my bag as part of a permanent carry-along item, along with my wallet, keys, and the ever-present pen & paper that always is on a self-identified writer’s person.

But as for straws…well, when did my vendetta against them begin in earnest? I had, these past few years, intermittenly refused them at restaurants, though it didn’t bother me so much if I forgot to or not (which I often did). If they still adorned my glass, I took it in stride and shrugged it off.

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Those of us who believe the state of Arizona has a right to protect its borders should do our part to blunt the effects of liberal-organized boycotts against that state. We are in the majority here. Most polls show that Americans favor Arizona’s new immigration law by nearly two to one. There is power in numbers, and they are on our side this time.

The boycotts are starting to mount up, from school boards meddling in politics and depriving their student athletes of the chance to participate in sporting events in Arizona to the Los Angeles city council’s recent vote to suspend business activities with that state. Arizona will soon begin to feel their negative effects.

Let’s replace the lost business and revenue by providing them with some of our own. Make Arizona your primary vacation destination this year. Buy as many products as you can that are made in Arizona.

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The political commentator, Matthew Dowd, recently suggested that the Republicans have become a ‘Mad Men’ party in a ‘Modern Family’ America. In light of the drubbing Gov. Romney and many Republicans took in the recent election, I think Dowd was mostly right. But the debacle for the Republicans, in my view, goes beyond being stuck in the era of Don Draper. I believe that the far-right wing in this country has managed to infect the Republican Party with a cultural form of neophobia— an irrational fear of new situations, places, or things. More broadly, the term may be used to describe a “fear of the modern”—for example, of recent changes in cultural attitudes, norms, or beliefs.

I claim no originality in reaching this conclusion. According to a report by Jodi Kantor in the New York Times (Nov. 7, 2012), several historians who have been meeting regularly with President Obama told him much the same thing.

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During the contentious negotiations leading to the final deal, a re-orientation of the starting point for developing future federal budgets seems to have occurred. Instead of an emphasis on appropriations and earmarks, with ever-growing federal programs, Congressional budgets may now begin with program cuts.

President Obama did not break the tea parties by forcing the Republicans to accept new tax revenues but the president did get a deal that pushes the deficit ceiling beyond the 2012 election.

Now, if Obama can line up a few Democratic votes in the House to replace unhappy tea party Republicans, he will sign the deal into law. House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, as good a vote counter as anyone in Washington, predicts that more than 60 Democrats will buck Minority Leader Pelosi and back the deal.

Senate Minority Leader McConnell can take credit for drawing the White House into negotiations at the critical point. Speaker Boehner can take credit for navigating his plan through the House, which forced the president to abandon his attempts to jam new taxes into the final agreement.

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In a September 15th, 2010 Wall Street Journal article, “Rove Fires Up Talk on O’Donnell”, Rove Fires Up, Republican strategist Karl Rove’s off-the-cuff comments about Christine O’Donnell’s victory as the Republican nominee for Delaware’s Senate seat were examined. Rove’s reaction to a move in the “right” direction by the defeat of Rep. Mike Castle, labeled a RINO (Republicans In Name Only) due to his liberal voting record, was very perplexing for staunch conservatives.

The WSJ article included the following Hannity-Rove exchange from Fox’s “Hannity” show:

Hannity: “You may be right in the end, I don’t know. We can look into our crystal ball and can say things. I would argue back to you gently that I don’t think we can make progress in stopping the Obama agenda with rhino Republicans that, you know are not going to be there when the solid votes are needed.”

Rove: “I agree. But we also can’t make progress if we have candidates who got serious character problems, who cause ordinary voters who are not philosophically aligned with us to not vote for our candidates out of concern of what they said and what they do.”

Is Rove implying the Republican Party has previously only offered candidates with impeccable character or that we should only offer candidates that would appeal to “voters who are not philosophically aligned with us”?

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Since we just celebrated our nation’s victory for independence, it’s healthy to step back from the canvas of the current admininstration to better understand the genesis and current context of its policies.

In the area of national security and military intervention, it’s been a fascinating exercise in political forensics to witness the response to President Obama’s firing of General Stanley McChrystal. If history demonstrates anything it’s that its lessons are perpetually susceptible to revision based on new evidence and more informed analysis. So it is that over the centuries, the credibility of Herodotus’ rendering of the Peloponnesian War has attenuated, while that of Thucydides is deemed more persuasive.

Moreover, the deeper one delves into the tiered nature of history, the clearer it becomes that discrete causes for events are the exception rather than the rule. A prototypical example is the causes of the Great War, now known as World War One.

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– Pogo, the comic strip philosopher created by Walt Kelly

Under the best of circumstances, the strong have trouble lifting the weak. More often, the weak pull down the strong. When the forerunner of the European Union was created with the 1957 Treaty of Rome, Europe’s political leaders heralded a new spirit of cooperation that would bring the disparate countries into political and economic union that could close the gap of economic disparity among Europe’s many nations. Eventually, through cooperation on continent-wide problems, Europeans would adopt a single currency, followed by a coordinated monetary policy and – possibly, just possibly – a single foreign policy.

After centuries of rivalry and warfare, Europe would settle into maturity under a single flag. Although partly realized, the vision was never completely practical. Early on, Europe’s leaders ducked the key constitutional and economic decisions concerning joint economic policies.

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