What’s on my mind?

February, the tradition time of year to flake on one’s New Year’s resolutions. Let’s see if there’s a second wind.

In honor of today, let’s get out of the house and go into the S&R archives.

Click for a bigger and better image.

So…

New Year’s Resolution: Revive Dawn’s weekly feature.

The end result will probably not be what I would have crafted, but the careful and deliberate formation of health care reform is admirable. For two-and-a -half hours last night, 180 House Democrats went line-by-line through the entire 1000+ page bill that is still being hammered together. During this time they were told to sit down and shut up until their aids got through the whole thing. After that they went another two hours through all of the questions they had. As one Representative put it, “No one’s going to say we haven’t read the bill.” Full Story »

While the Republican Party is closing its ranks and entrenching itself in their ideology, the White Power movement wants you to ‘come see the lighter side‘ of racism and is hoisting its own “Big Tent”. It looks like the Grand Ol’ Party isn’t the only one playing with rebranding.

First, President Obama got the jump on the republicans by making a big show of courting their votes and then, after almost every single one of them voted against his stimulus and just about everything else the democrats put up, he successfully tarred them with being the Party of No.  Since then they have retreated into their “base”, the core of their ideologically rigid fans, and lost a senator in the process. Full Story »

Sometimes it’s good to go back and see who had it right.  Poor Peter Schiff came out again and again on Fox to sound the alarm bell that we borrowed too much to sink into shoddy morgages – and was laughed off every time. If only the nation listened to him 2-3 years ago.

There is an absolutely heartbreaking documentary by the New York Times on a girls school in Pakistan that is being closed down by the Taliban. Please watch it; it really struck home with me.

I have two girls myself and their hunger for learning is astonishing. My youngest, who’s 4 1/2, is in a Montessori school where they suggested she could move up to kindergarten a year early. Once she caught wind of this, she’s been working her butt off to get into that class. Her goal (not mine, mind you. She got this into her head all by herself) is to read all of the beginners books by herself (at least a couple dozen of them) and she has started making up homework assignments for herself. Last night she was writing down and solving her own addition problems. It would astonish me that a 4-year-old could do this except I’ve seen it all before. My eldest, who’s 8, skipped a grade and  just came home proudly showing us her report card.  She is now reading through the entire Harry Potter series again.

Now I am imagining what I would do if someone tried to hold them back. With guns, public whippings, beheadings. I used to be not very keen on Obama’s plan to add more troops over there. But goddamn we’ve got to do something.

“You’ve got to give the Republicans this: they stay on message, regardless of context or logic. Society could be in the midst of a zombie apocalypse and the GOP would be wringing its hands over the government giving out shotguns rather than giving tax cuts to shotgun makers.“

- Bromius

Full Story »

Let’s go back to one month after 9/11.  The country just suffered its worse terrorist attack in the nation’s history and was going through another.  Weaponized anthrax was being sent through the mail targeting politicians and the 4th estate. The intelligence agencies failed catastrophically and didn’t cooperate with each other. The nation panicked and didn’t know if it could protect itself.

The response? The USA PATRIOT Act. Full Story »

The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire remains the archetype for whenever we consider the collapse of any great structural entity. But the current entity the Decline now relates to is no longer a national or political system; it is economic. Full Story »

And you may ask yourself
What is that beautiful house?
And you may ask yourself
Where does that highway go?
And you may ask yourself
Am I right? …am I wrong?
And you may tell yourself
My god!…what have I done?

-Talking Heads

The Dow ended its day at its lowest point in eleven years. Full Story »

On the eve of the election, the New York Times editorial board wrote up an excellent critique of Bush’s last minute, lame duck executive orders that he signed on November the first. Here are some excerpts:

Agents will be allowed to use informants to infiltrate lawful groups, engage in prolonged physical surveillance and lie about their identity while questioning a subject’s neighbors, relatives, co-workers and friends. Full Story »