The rest of the world sees this shutdown--and the Republicans--for what it is and they are

(click on picture for easier reading)

 

We need to stop the stupidity, at least, if not the insanity.

 

 

Contact your member of Congress: 

 

Contacting the Congress: A Citizen's Congressional Directory

 

Please.

 

 

Quote of the day--on the internet, computers and us

In theory the Internet, along with its kindred advances, should expand our horizons, speeding us to aesthetic and intellectual territories we haven’t charted before. Often it does.

But at our instigation and with our assent, it also herds us into tribes of common thought and shared temperament, amplifying the timeless human tropism toward cliques. Cyberspace, like suburbia, has gated communities.

Our Web bookmarks and our chosen social-media feeds help us retreat deeper into our partisan camps. (Cable-television news lends its own mighty hand.) “It’s the great irony of the Internet era: people have more access than ever to an array of viewpoints, but also the technological ability to screen out anything that doesn’t reinforce their views,” Jonathan Martin wrote in Politico last year...

--Frank Bruni, New York Times columnist from his article in 

Sunday's paper, Traveling Without Seeing

Quote of the day

‎"The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of doubt, what is laid before him."

--Leo Tolstoy

Two bad headlines with negative indicators for the president

First this one:

Economic Fears Hurting Obama, Poll Indicates

Then this:

Public's Opinion of Supreme Court Drops After Health Care Law Decision

This is one crazy, crazy election year, isn't it, folks?

Romney's imploding but the president is eroding.

Links: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/19/us/politics/poll-shows-economic-fears-undercutting-obama-support.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120719

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/19/us/politics/publics-opinion-of-court-drops-after-health-care-law-decision.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120719

Afghan War a losing propostion

So the President came out and finally told us all what we knew--and that is, that he's going to send thirty thousand more American Troops to Afghanistan, in hopes of cleaning up the mess that's over there.

And the fact is, most Democrats don't want it, lots of Republicans don't want it, we can't really afford it, a lot of Afghanis don't want us there (though, admittedly, a lot more likely do) and what you end up with is a war we never wanted being extended when we don't really want it extended.

This is not good for this President.

And it's not good for his reform agenda.

Finally, it's not good for the work we need to do here in this country.

Fortunately, at least Senator Russ Feingold, for one, is speaking up against this war and against the troop increase. We'll see if anyone joins him.

I don't pretend this war--or the answers for it--are easy. They absolutely aren't.

What I will say is that the American people are solidly against this war and have been for a long time.

And you don't win a war if the people aren't with you.

Links: http://feingold.senate.gov/
http://feingold.senate.gov/record.cfm?id=320378
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_Afghanistan_(2001%E2%80%93present)
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/06/world/asia/06reconstruct.html?_r=1&th&emc=th