04 Friday Nov 2011
Posted in The Outer Loop
For those of you who have followed MillersTime’s The Outer Loop blog, you know that episodically I post or link to articles and speeches that I believe help us understand what is happening in our country.
Once again I turn to Bill Moyers for his insights. This time it is a speech he gave in October 2011 celebrating the 40th anniversary of Ralph Nader’s Public Citizen organization.
26 Wednesday Oct 2011
Posted in The Outer Loop
MillersTime readers hopefully know by now that I often post articles or links to articles that I believe advance a debate, help our understanding of what is going on in our country and the world beyond, or pieces that I just think deserve wider circulation.
Today I post Frank Rich’s recent article in New York Magazine. Rich left the NY Times this year because he indicated he wanted more time to think about what he was writing as well as the opportunity to write longer articles.
While the current media and various constituencies are jockeying to put their spin on what is taking place with OWS and the Tea Party, Rich takes a step back and looks at an historical context for what is now occurring, and, in the process, I think, adds good perspective.
Feel free to add your comment below.
18 Tuesday Oct 2011
Posted in The Outer Loop
For the past 30+ years, ever since my wife Ellen became the Director of Center for Responsive Politics and the good Larry Makinson taught all of us how to follow the money in Congress with his Open Secrets work, I’ve been aware of and followed the role of money in politics.
I thought I pretty much knew the most of it. But this morning I read an article by Thomas Ferguson (The Price of Power: Congressional Leadership Positions for Sale to the Highest Bidder) that even made me wince and included information that Ellen says she didn’t know and Larry never told me.
And so I link to this article for those of you who want to understand just why Congress is and will continue to be so responsive to those who fund their campaigns.
(Note: The article linked to above was first posted at The Washington Spectator.)
14 Friday Oct 2011
Posted in The Outer Loop
Early morning checking of the news (via Twitter) brings word that the owners of the square being occupied in NY (how does someone/a business own a square in NYC?) have asked the city not to clear the demonstrators. And so an impending confrontation seems averted for the moment.
But a larger question: What is Occupy Wall Street really?
Is it just a bunch of middle and upper middle class folks out protesting?
And is it even clear what they are protesting?
28 Wednesday Sep 2011
Posted in The Outer Loop
Some of you have probably know of Cory Booker, the mayor of Newark. Some of you may have heard his name. Lots of you probably don’t know him at all.
When you have 25 minutes to devote to a YouTube video, do yourself, me, and the country a favor by listening to what he recently told an audience.
Click on the link below. You won’t be disappointed.
Each of us, All of us – Cory Booker at Zeitgeist Americas 2011
25 Sunday Sep 2011
Posted in The Outer Loop
Elizabeth Warren has only been on the campaign trail for a few weeks in her MA run for the Senate against Sen. Scott Brown. Already, however, she is exciting many Democrats and worrying some Republicans.
If you haven’t heard or read much about her, check out what she said recently:
20 Tuesday Sep 2011
Posted in The Outer Loop
(A Lincoln student, also a long time friend and MillersTime reader, emailed the following to me a few days ago — a response to Michael Gerson’s “Failing the Lincoln Test: Obama’s ordinary response to extraordinary challenge,” Washington Post, 9/13/11. Click Here to read Gerson’s article).
from Richard Margolies:
Michael Gerson’s op-ed, 9/13/11, fails the Lincoln vision test. He claims that Obama does not meet our crisis with solutions. He selectively builds his case and overlooks similarities between these two leaders.
Both Lincoln and Obama responded to fundamental changes facing our nation. Lincoln saw the country moving to a new manufacturing economy in the 1850s and 1860s. Obama sees the country moving to a knowledge and service mode of production in the 21st century.
08 Thursday Sep 2011
Posted in The Outer Loop
The Outer Loop, one of the four blogs at MiillersTime, is a place where I sometimes comment on local, national, and/or international issues and often link to articles that I think are worthy of your attention.
And as I relaunch MillersTime with a new design (but the same old ‘editor’), I bring you two ‘articles’ that I suspect you have not seen.
Both authors are individuals who are new to me.
One is a life long Democrat who calls himself a ‘country doctor,’ and who believes Pres. Obama needs to be challenged for the nomination because he has failed overwhelmingly in what he said he would do. His name is Joe Mason, and he says he will run for the presidency himself in 2012 if Obama does not respond to questions about why he has not done what he promised.
The other is a retiring Congressional staff member who for 28 years worked on budget, defense, and security issues, primarily for Republicans in both the Senate and the House. His name is Mike Lofgren, and he’s leaving the Hill and the party and tells why. He also is no fan of the Democrats.
I post them together, not because I am trying to be balanced (for those who have followed MillersTime since its inception, you know I was a strong supporter of Obama’s candidacy and hoped he would be a terrific president). I post them both because sometimes the best insights come from within (a party, an organization, a group), and these two pieces clearly do that. Together, they not only describe our current political landscape but also put words to much of what I have been thinking and feeling about why our politics have become so dysfunctional.
When you have the time, I hope you will read Lofgren’s long and well written statement, which was recently published in Truthout.org., and also listen to Mason’s YouTube presentation (approximately 15 minutes). As always, please feel free to add your comment(s), respectfully.
The two ‘articles’:
1. Click Here for YouTube Presentation — Joe Mason for President
2. Goodbye to All That: Reflections of a GOP Operative Who Left the Cult
(Photo: Carolyn Tiry / Flickr)
Barbara Stanwyck: “We’re both rotten!”
Fred MacMurray: “Yeah – only you’re a little more rotten.” -”Double Indemnity” (1944)
Those lines of dialogue from a classic film noir sum up the state of the two political parties in contemporary America. Both parties are rotten – how could they not be, given the complete infestation of the political system by corporate money on a scale that now requires a presidential candidate to raise upwards of a billion dollars to be competitive in the general election? Both parties are captives to corporate loot. The main reason the Democrats’ health care bill will be a budget buster once it fully phases in is the Democrats’ rank capitulation to corporate interests – no single-payer system, in order to mollify the insurers; and no negotiation of drug prices, a craven surrender to Big Pharma.
But both parties are not rotten in quite the same way. The Democrats have their share of machine politicians, careerists, corporate bagmen, egomaniacs and kooks. Nothing, however, quite matches the modern GOP.
08 Thursday Sep 2011
Posted in The Outer Loop
As the 10 year anniversary of the tragedy of 9/11 comes, there are numerous articles, remembrances, pictures, etc. that seem to be flooding all forms of the media, old and new.
One of the articles that I found of particular interest is by a writer I have always enjoyed following, but since his move from the NY Times to New York magazine, I haven’t read much of what he has been writing.
Take a look at this piece that was published a week or so ago. And feel free to comment, respectfully, of course.
Day’s End
The 9/11 decade is now over. The terrorists lost. But who won?
By Frank Rich, New York (magazine)
It was “the day that changed everything,” until it didn’t. Even in the immediate aftermath, you could see that 9/11 was less momentous for some Americans who were at a safe remove from the carnage and grief. By late September, the ratings at CNN, then 24/7 terror central, had fallen by more than 70 percent. As I traveled across the country that grim fall to fulfill a spectacularly ill-timed book tour, I discovered that the farther west I got, the more my audiences questioned me as though I were a refugee from some flickering evening-news hot spot as distant and exotic as Beirut. When I described the scent of burning flesh wafting through Manhattan, or my sister-in-law’s evacuation by the National Guard from her ash-filled apartment on John Street, I was greeted with polite yet unmistakable expressions of disbelief.
03 Wednesday Aug 2011
Posted in The Outer Loop
I’ve just spent the last 30-40 minutes reading Nicholas Schmidle’s Getting Bin Laden: What happened that night in Abbottabad. In this just published ‘Reporter at Large’ piece in the August 8, 2011 The New Yorker magazine, Schmidle details the events leading up to the raid, the raid itself, and the events following the raid.
It’s a good read, well written, and tells you more than you know and somethings worth knowing.
And while I probably put myself amongst those who generally look askance at assassinations of any sort, I have no doubts about this one.
As I am preparing this post, NPR informs me that President Obama has just signed the debt ceiling bill. Obviously not the finest hour for any of our leaders.
But even though it took ten years, one can’t help but give credit to all who had a part in finally getting bin Laden.
Read it when you have at least a half hour to spare. Once you start the article, you will not be able to put it down.
You can get to The New Yorker article by using one of the two links below:
CLICK HERE for The New Yorker site.
If that link does work for you, CLICK HERE.
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Update 8/5/11 - Two ‘alert’ MillersTime readers wrote to tell me of a possible controversy brewing about Schmidle’s article.
ET wrote to say he saw Schmidle on the PBS NewsHour and thought the author was evasive when asked how he came by his information (Schmidle apparently had not interviewed any of the Seals involved in the raid).
EO sent a link to The Schmidle Muddle of the Osama Bin Laden Take Down, a critical and skeptical view of Schmidle’s article. CLICK HERE.