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)

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)

• Published Aug 27, 2011

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.

Continue reading »

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.