Puerto Rican State Senator Roberto Arango
Is this just happening in politics or has it become the rage in banking and real estate, too?
On a brighter note, for Google anyway, Android phones seem to be dominating in these bathroom mirror spreads by about 3-1.
from politico.com
Just before President Obama left for his Martha’s Vineyard vacation — immediately following his media-maligned mid-west bus tour — President Obama announced that he would be delivering a “jobs plan” upon his return to work in September. The timing of the announcement clearly was orchestrated to ease the sting on the vacation news narrative, i.e.,: Millions of Americans Out of Work; Obama Goes to the Beach.
I can hear the conversation between aides: “We’re going to get killed on this.”
“Tell ’em we’ll be giving them a jobs plan.”
The Hill points out today in a long story about the myriad challenges facing the President, that maybe that decision was not such a good one. Giving the news media weeks to speculate on what such a jobs plan might entail will virtually ensure that it falls flat. No doubt Team Obama is wrestling with that now. “Is there a single surprise we can add? Anything.” As a result, things will only be reported as missing from the plan.
At the same time, the long notice will guarantee that Republicans in Congress will be ready to up the ante on anything the President proposes.
The Obama Team used to be so good at this…
UPDATE: I AM RELIEVED AND ASHAMED TO LEARN THAT AN UNFOUNDED RUMOR ABOUT A FRIEND’S CAUSE OF DEATH MADE IT ONTO THESE PAGES. CARDIAC ARRHYTHMIA IS WHAT TOOK THE LIFE OF THE MAN DISCUSSED BELOW, AND NOTHING ELSE. I BEG THE FORGIVENESS OF MEMBERS OF PETER’S FAMILY FOR REPEATING AN ERRONEOUS ACCOUNT. PETER’S LOSS REMAINS AN INEXPLICABLE TRAGEDY. MY PRAYERS ARE WITH HIM.
I don’t remember much from 8th Grade English class. But I do recall two poems, Ozymandias and Richard Corey.
The first, by Percy Shelley, is better known. It was taught by rote to students for generations, and may still be today. But Richard Corey, by Edwin Arlington Robinson, the lesser known, I remember more clearly.
Richard Corey is about a man about town who has everything going for him. He is liked and admired by his neighbors; he is handsome and wealthy.
Here is how it goes:
WHENEVER Richard Cory went down town,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean favored, and imperially slim.
And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
“Good-morning,” and he glittered when he walked.
And he was rich—yes, richer than a king,
And admirably schooled in every grace:
In fine, we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.
So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.
Naturally, I was surprised when I read the ending to the poem. It was as incongruous as Robinson intended it to be. And it was starkly adult. Right then and there, at age 13, I knew my classmates and I were deemed ready to begin learning about the other side of life.
A couple of years ago, I befriended a super-nice guy in the area where I now live. He was in his fifties, and in better shape than most 25-year olds — a strong, good-looking guy, a natural athlete, with a flash of a smile. Peter worked as an assistant golf pro at a tony Westchester Country Club. He was divorced, but has had two or three girlfriends in the time I have known him.
We belonged to a local association together where everybody liked him, and I took to dropping him off at his house at night after meetings because he didn’t drive. I expected to drop him off last night. I cleaned the passenger side of my Ford before pulling out of my driveway.
Turns out I didn’t have to. Last Tuesday, on a beautiful August afternoon, my friend Peter filled his pockets with stones, stepped into his pool and sank to the bottom, where he stayed. I’ll never know why. No one will.
Peter K. was 58. RIP.
No. It’s not his call to evacuate low-lying areas of New York. Even if Hurricane Irene is a bust, that was a good one. Better safe than sorry.
But the decision to ban clergy from the 10th Anniversary 9/11 memorial service is just plain weird. What New York City event in the last 50 years warrants it more?
People find comfort in religion. They find guidance – at the most difficult times in their lives. It’s when we need it. But the 9/11 ceremonies will be stripped of all vestiges of religion and spirituality. What a shame. Strict secularism – the new religion of government – will prevail.
There will be no priests, rabbis, or imams at Ground Zero. Only politicians. And who wants to listen to them?
UPDATE: One of my best friends and a member of the Bloomberg Administration informs me that the ceremony has remain unchanged for the past 9 years — and that it has only included family members. I still would like to see clergy present, but her email well explains why the ceremony will be clergy-free. Bad news: She may be mad at me. Good news: I’m thrilled to have her as a reader.
Goshen College, a third-tier liberal arts school in Indiana, has banned the National Anthem at all its sporting events because the War-of-1812-inspired lyrics are “too violent,” NBC Sports is reporting.
The Goshen Maple Leafs? Ever heard of ’em? Didn’t think so.
Here’s the whole Francis Scott Key poem for what it’s worth:
Oh, say, can you see, by the dawn’s early light,
What so proudly we hail’d at the twilight’s last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars, thro’ the perilous fight,
O’er the ramparts we watch’d, were so gallantly streaming?
And the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof thro’ the night that our flag was still there.
O say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?
On the shore dimly seen thro’ the mists of the deep,
Where the foe’s haughty host in dread silence reposes,
What is that which the breeze, o’er the towering steep,
As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?
Now it catches the gleam of the morning’s first beam,
In full glory reflected, now shines on the stream:
‘Tis the star-spangled banner: O, long may it wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!
And where is that band who so vauntingly swore
That the havoc of war and the battle’s confusion
A home and a country should leave us no more?
Their blood has wash’d out their foul footsteps’ pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave:
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.
O, thus be it ever when freemen shall stand,
Between their lov’d homes and the war’s desolation;
Blest with vict’ry and peace, may the heav’n-rescued land
Praise the Pow’r that hath made and preserv’d us a nation!
Then conquer we must, when our cause is just,
And this be our motto: “In God is our trust”
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!
Bloomberg’s Jonathan Alter asks today why President Obama has been a bad president. Rather, he challenges anyone to give him one good reason.
“I want to know, on a substantive basis,” Alter writes, “why you think [Obama] deserves to be in a dead heat with Mitt Romney and Rick Perry and only a few points ahead of Ron Paul and Michele Bachmann in a new Gallup Poll. Is it just that any president — regardless of circumstances and party — who presides over 9 percent unemployment deserves to lose?”
I suggest that Alter take a peek at the above graph. Obama’s stimulus spending didn’t work. All it did was steal from our children. That’s why.
from newsone.com
I shudder to think that students at Princeton University voluntarily consume the anti-American vile spewed by professor and “philosopher” Cornel West. It will take some of them a decade or more of real-world experience to disabuse themselves of West’s paranoid vision of a modern-day slave-master dynamic in this country.
In The New York Times today West suggests that Martin Luther King, Jr., whose celebrated memorial on the National Mall is opening in the shadow of a White House occupied by an African-American president, would “weep” at the injustices of today’s United States. West, who punctuates every other thought with the exhausted term “industrial complex”, writes:
“The absence of a King-worthy narrative to reinvigorate poor and working people has enabled right-wing populists to seize the moment with credible claims about government corruption and ridiculous claims about tax cuts’ stimulating growth. This right-wing threat is a catastrophic response to King’s four catastrophes; its agenda would lead to hellish conditions for most Americans. King weeps from his grave.”
His solution to the reactionary conspiracy?
“In concrete terms, this means support for progressive politicians like Senator Bernard Sanders of Vermont and Mark Ridley-Thomas, a Los Angeles County supervisor; extensive community and media organizing; civil disobedience; and life and death confrontations with the powers that be.”
Can anyone imagine what America would be like if the Wests and Sanders and Ridley-Thomases ever succeeded in those confrontations? (Although I’m not really sure who those “powers that be” are. Procter and Gamble? The New York Times in which he writes?)
Fortunately, we have historical examples: Soviet Russia, Democratic Kampuchea, Castro’s Cuba, and Maoist China.
Princeton shouldn’t list West’s classes in its philosophy curriculum. They should be part of the archeology department. Only then would they provide real value to America’s youth.
]
“If you love this country, you serve this country.” With that sentence spoken on CNN today, former Utah governor John Huntsman effectively takes himself out the 2012 Presidential Primary and puts himself on the market as a Vice Presidential running mate. First he blanches at the thought of running alongside Mitt Romney, presumably because they are both Mormon, and then embraces the idea of running with Michele Bachmann. It’s hard to tell if Huntsman planted the question with his interview to float his name for VP, or if he tripped himself up with his answer. But what is said is said, and Huntsman will now have to live with it.
photo by Sergey Ponomarev, AP
Amazing photos out of out of Tripoli. If it didn’t seem morose, I’d do an online survey on whether or not Gaddafi is taken alive. (If I were to have done that, I’d have bet “no.” As bad as Gaddafi is, he seems the proud type. I’d guess he goes down blazing, although we’ll never know. The rebels would never give him that legacy.)
I’m at a stage in life where I am consumed by bills. I am 48. I have three children, two approaching college age.
My wife and I get nothing in the mail but bills — water bills, electric bills, heating bills, property tax bills, clothing bills, car insurance bills, life insurance bills, home insurance bills, cell phone bills, internet bills, cable bills, medical bills, dental bills, commuting bills, credit card bills, babysitting bills, etc, etc. etc. And our first daughter will start college in two years, God willing.
But the biggest bill of them all — the monthly mortar shell — is the mortgage bill. It lands with a thud, and then explodes into every area of our lives. And the son-of-a-bitch is going to keep landing for 26 more years.
So I was naturally interested this morning to read in The New York Times that President Obama is considering a mandate on banks to lower mortgage rates uniformly to four percent. That is considerably lower than our current rate, and it would provide relief akin to removing a knee from the solar plexus.
The ostensible reason for this mandate is the freeing of money to increase consumer spending (an effective tax cut at the expense of the banks). But the real reason, of course, is votes. And what a vote-getter this would be.
For the first time this morning I felt the lure of being bought by a government program. With the stroke of a pen, a beneficent politician could make my life and my wife’s life considerably easier. He could ease our sharpest financial pain and give us breathing room overnight. One man.
In an instant I felt the tug that must be felt by people living in rent controlled and rent stabilized apartments, or of those absolved of income taxes and the like. For those less fortunate, the relief — and gratitude felt toward the government benefactor — must be even greater.
Immediately following my twinge of hope came the rationalizations, zipping through my head like enlightened pinballs: Those greedy-bastard banks ruined this country; the taxpayers bailed them out and they gave themselves bonuses; they’d take this deal in a heartbeat; how dare they charge me that interest rate on my credit cards, it’s about time they paid!
The mind is wonderfully accommodating. It can find argument to suit every human desire, especially, I find, a desire for relief – the desire for an artificially mandated four-percent mortgage rate.
But there’s one problem with that. I signed a contract to pay a higher rate. In ink.
Time to get serious about re-financing…
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