Tag: Open Thread

The Pens won the series 4-1, and move on to the Stanley Cup Finals

In the west, game 6 is tonight, the Wings lead the series 3-2.  Be ready to make your finals pick….  😉  

Kate Bush

Cloudbursting

the politics of preschool..

Now with extra appeasement!

Yesterday I ran across the piece that NLinStPaul discusses in Full-Blooded Americans at Atrios and it sent me scurrying to teh Google to find some speeches by Hitler that contained “Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Furher”.  As it turns out it is so pervasive a theme of Nazi propaganda that searching on it is kind of hopeless, though I did run across some of Goebbels “Our Furher” speeches (birthday speeches for Hitler) that were evocative but not entirely on point.  Just as well because NL’s essay is much better than mine would have been and I’ll Front Page it tomorrow.

So I went instead with my little celebration of Republican party disarray which continues today with-

Six ways the GOP can save itself

Jim VandeHei, Mike Allen, Politico

Thu May 15, 5:25 AM ET

Summarized they are-

1. New ideas and an attractive agenda
2. Purge scandal-stained members, swear off boondoggle spending projects and promote strong ethical standards
3. Re-build network of donors, think tanks and activist groups
4. Disassociate from President Bush
5. Fresh, reassuring packaging and new spokespeople
6. Stir up concerns about Democratic patriotism and their commitment to national security

and-

Hagee’s apocalyptic support of Israel

Ben Smith, Politico

Thu May 15, 5:16 AM ET

Hagee’s commitment to Israel, however, is itself controversial: It’s rooted in the belief that the Jewish state will — soon — be the site of Armageddon.

Hagee, who leads the evangelical group Christians United for Israel, is a proponent of U.S. aid and support for Israel, and he is a major ally of Israeli conservatives who reject any “land for peace” formula in dealing with the Palestinians. But Hagee is viewed with distrust by some Jews and Israelis because his brand of Christian Zionism closely links support for Israel to the end of the world and the conversion of the Jews to Christianity.

Hagee’s predictions are very clear. Armageddon, the final battle, could begin, he wrote in his 2007 book “Jerusalem Countdown,” “before this book gets published.”

Indeed Troutfishing said today that he had a copy of Hagee’s specially annotated Bible (free for a small “faith donation”) where he lays out all his eschatology.

But I want to talk about appeasement.

Thursday,  I  Think  Seriously,  About  Stupid  Shit

so i’ve been gardening a lot lately…

that’s part of why this pony is late

(& the truck broke down~ i had to get mrD from town)

A federal judge has turned back the Democratic National Committee’s attempt to mount a legal challenge against Sen. John McCain for his decision to withdraw from the presidential public financing system.

The reason is explained in the Washinton Post story

How bad is it to be a Republican?

“Really the mistake they have made is to nationalize these elections when the national image is poisonous for Republicans right now,” explained Craig Shirley, a Republican strategist with Shirley Bannister Public Relations. “What they should do is focus on local affairs. When you are sending in big time politicians from Washington and cater to the national media, you are reminding people why they are upset with the Republican Party in the first place.”

…

“This is as bad as I can remember since post Watergate,” said Shirley. “It was so bad in 1974 after Gerald Ford was nominated for Vice President that there was a special election for his congressional district, which had been Republican since the civil war, and it went Democratic… The fact is that these are comparable races. These are all three seats that have been in GOP hands for a long, long time… Ultimately voters want to know what a politician is going to do for them. What has happened with the Republican Party over the last eight years is that some of the consultants have decided it is too hard to define what we stand for so we are just going to paint Democrats as worse than us.”

…

“This is 1994 all over again,” Frank Luntz, a famed Republican communications consultant, told The Huffington Post. “I was there. I saw it firsthand. The Republicans of 2008 are behaving exactly like the Democrats of ’94 and making exactly the same mistakes. It’s pathetic.”

GOP Adviser: This is ’94 In Reverse, We’re Pathetic

Sam Stein, The Huffington Post

May 14, 2008 04:49 PM

“The political atmosphere facing House Republicans this November is the worst since Watergate and is far more toxic than the fall of 2006, when we lost 30 seats (and our majority) and came within a couple of percentage points of losing another 15 seats,” Rep. Tom Davis, a moderate Northern Virginia Republican who previously headed the National Republican Congressional Committee, wrote in a 20-page memo to colleagues.

GOP cancer: Party could lose 20 more seats

John F. Harris, Josh Kraushaar, Politico

Wed May 14, 9:09 PM ET

“Well, this is the floor,” Davis said, stomping on the concrete beneath him. “And we’re underneath the floor.” Without strong medicine, he said, Republicans will lose 25 seats in November. “We’re the airplane flying into the mountain.”

Agitated? Irritable? Hostile? Aggressive? Impulsive? Restless?

By Dana Milbank, The Washington Post

Thursday, May 15, 2008

Neil and Peggy, ‘Four Strong Winds’

According to this Yahoo!News story, a scientist who discovered a new species of trapdoor spider has named it for Neil Young.

The new species is called ‘Myrmekiaphila neilyoungi’.