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  • Make him an offer he can't refuse - Plausible deniability has always been a cornerstone for staying out of trouble when it comes to down and dirty backroom politics, but the circle may be tightening just a notch for the Obama administration
  • The Miss America President - The rest is just marketing

  • O Ye of Little Faith: The Secular American Media and Religion - The media have an inadequate understanding of religion. This simple fact is corroborated frequently, as mainstream outlets attempt to illustrate stories, explain religious themes and delve deep into faith-based systems.  Unfortunately, most outlets miss the mark entirely, as journalists do not have proper understanding of the constructs through which they are attempting to report.  As [...]
  • Six Questions to Ask About the Federal Budget -

    One of the biggest problems in getting Americans engaged on the nation's fiscal challenges is that the problem is so hard for most people to get their arms around. The numbers are so huge, the issues so arcane and the problems so daunting that people may get angry about it, but have no idea how to grab onto it.

    That's what makes the approach of the Committee on the Fiscal Future of the United States interesting. Their Choosing the Nation's Fiscal Future report, issued by the National Research Council and the National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA) today, is about how to control our national debt, already past $12 trillion and threatening to rise to staggering (and dangerous) proportions. Public Agenda is part of the Choosing Our Fiscal Future project with NAPA, working to build a network of citizens who'll get involved in the discussion and work on solutions.

    The nonpartisan committee laid out a goal for a sustainable debt level (keeping it to 60 percent of gross domestic product), four alternative paths for reaching the goal, and six basic questions to ask about any federal budget. The committee argues that if the answers to these questions are "yes," we're at least making progress.

    Here are the questions, taken directly from the report. Consider whether the federal budget meets them now – and more importantly, keep them in mind as new budgets are proposed.

    1. Does the proposed budget include policy actions that start to reduce the deficit in the near future in order to reduce short-term borrowing and long-term interest costs?

    2. Does the proposed budget put the government on a path to reduce the federal debt within a decade to a sustainable percentage of GDP? Given the fiscal outlook and the committee’s analysis of the many factors that affect economic outcomes, the committee believes that the lowest ratio that is economically manageable within a decade, as well as practical and politically feasible, is 60 percent.

    3. Does the proposed budget align revenues and spending closely over the long term?

    4. Does the proposed budget restrain health care cost growth and introduce changes now in the major entitlement programs and in other spending and tax policies that will have cumulative beneficial fiscal effects over time?

    5. Does the budget include spending and revenue policies that are cost-effective and promote more efficient use of resources in both the public and private sectors?

    6. Does the federal budget reflect a realistic assessment of the fiscal problems facing state and local governments?

    This gives the public something they haven't had before: a set of standards for a "good" budget, or at least as good as it can be given the tremendous fiscal challenges we face. If we give the public more tools to measure the problem, and grapple with real solutions, we can get ahead of this challenge – while there's still time.

    To find out more, and to become part of the citizen network working on this issue, visit the Choosing Our Fiscal Future web site, become a Facebook fan, or follow us on Twitter @FiscalFuture.


  • News You Can Use - Who’s persuadable about Obamacare, and how you can nudge them.
  • Is NPR a hate group? - KPBS, the local NPR affiliate, titles a discussion on Tea Parties “Are Tea Partiers Hate Groups?” The panel included Richard Rider, who eloquently explained the Tea Party movement, a Poway Tea Party woman who was sincere but a bit confused and garbled, a “peace” professor and a Southern Poverty Law Center representative. Rider had to [...]

  • San Antonio Hotel view - This is the view off our patio in San Antone. That sound you hear is beers being popped and prepping the battlefield for this evening.
  • Tom Hanks should stick to making films - I'm not going to go on a rant about Tom Hanks recent remarks about why we fought the Japanese during WWII, but I do have a comment or two to make. He said: Back in World War II, we viewed the Japanese as ‘yellow, slant-eyed dogs’ that believed in different gods. They were out to kill us because our way of living was different. We, in turn, wanted to annihilate them because they were different. Does that sound familiar, by any chance, to what’s going on today? It is easy to make ignorant statements like that when you decide you need to make a political point. We see it everyday in the three-ring circus we call politics. Bending history to fit your ideological point of view is nothing new and there's certainly nothing so special about Tom Hanks that he's somehow above such nonsense. But he ought to know better, especially after making this new HBO miniseries about the Pacific war. My dad served in the Army for 36 years and was on Saipan, Leyte and Okinawa. Unlike Hanks, he actually fought the Japanese in some very tough battles - especially the last one. He never talked about it much when I was a kid, although when old friends would stop by at the posts where we were assigned, I'd hear some of the stories by getting myself in an unobserved position in the next room and quietly listening. I don't remember he or any of his friends ever reflecting the sort of attitude Hanks would have us to believe was prevalent then. Sure, they referred to them as "Japs", but not because they thought it was derrogatory or because they believed them to be "different", but because, well, that's what they were. The story I remember most concerned his time on Saipan. As he told the story you could tell the memory had an effect on him. He told about Japanese families - women, kids - jumping off a cliff to avoid capture ("Suicide cliff" in Saipan). You could tell he thought it was awful and it was clear in the telling that the memory was vivid. They'd brought in Japanese speakers to try to talk the families out of jumping, but the indoctrination and the culture were so strong that they jumped anyway. If you want to "annihilate" someone, you don't make that sort of effort to save them. If you consider them as "different" in the way Hanks intimates, such things wouldn't shake you as it obviously did my father and those he had served with. He said that the only Japanese captives they ever took were those who'd been either knocked unconscious before capture or were so badly wounded they couldn't avoid it. Certainly they were "different" in the sense that their honor and culture called upon them to do things American culture would never call on its soldiers to do. But that didn't make them less than human to my father. He certainly wasn't at all pleased with the way the Japanese treated prisoners of war and held a hell of grudge about that. But I got the impression that he considered the Japanese barbaric because of that, not less than human. He held them responsible for that conduct because they were human beings. And after the war, we shocked them with the most humane occupation imaginable and the rebuilding of their nation. The reason my dad and hundreds of thousands of other Americans fought the Japanese wasn't because they were racially "different" or worshiped a different god. Nor did they do it with the aim of "annihilating" them. It was because the had attacked the United States, were the enemy and that enemy had to be defeated. Period. My father and his comrades would have fought the Germans with the same ferocity they fought the Japanese had they been in Europe. Tom Hanks is a fine actor and an excellent film maker. But he should stick with what he knows. Deciding how those fighting the Japanese thought of their enemy isn't one of them. Making a film about them doesn't suddenly make him some sort of expert in that regard either. And, pretending to know what motivates those of us who fight our enemies of today is just as mistaken.

  • I’m a Feminist! - I believe in equal justice under the law for us human females, a principle that covers a multitude of rights. For example, equal pay for equal work, the right to vote, and the right to live.
  • Bound Ambition - Me and my blog. Oh boy. As I’ve mentioned a few times, I’m writing a novel in the paranormal and Christian genres. I started a year ago, and I’m presently rewriting/revising it. I hope to have it agent-ready by my birthday, May 5. Will I make it? I’ve invested a year writing this story. I’m determined [...]

  • Constitution Butchers: Stop Pelosi’s Slaughter House - Meet Constitution-butchers Nancy Pelosi and Louise Slaughter. Cleaning House…by bloodying it: Photoshop exclusive: Big Fur Hat at iowntheworld.com and Applecross Media Via Doug Ross: In the Slaughter Solution, the rule would declare that the House “deems” the Senate version of Obamacare to have been passed by the House. House members would still have to vote on whether to accept [...]
  • NYT pity party for Obama bundler-turned-bungler Desiree Rogers - The New York Times lends more than 2,000 words to console laughingstock former WH social secretary Desiree Rogers. Bring a Kleenex to the pity party: The rise and fall of Desirée Rogers, the glamorous Harvard-educated corporate executive who brought sizzle to the State Dining Room but became a victim of a publicity stunt by a pair of [...]

  • Quotes of the day - Brewing.
  • Finally: “Hot Air: The Movie” - Dude.

  • Buh-Bye, Walter Cronkite: He Lost the Vietnam War for U.S. on TV, Had American Blood on His Hands - By Debbie Schlussel I just heard the news that former CBS anchorman Walter Cronkite died. And perhaps I will be one of the few with the guts to be real and say it: I'm not sad to see this overrated...
  • Weekend Box Office: Long, Boring "Harry Potter"; Cool "Merry Gentleman" Thriller Flubs the Yarmulke - By Debbie Schlussel My weekend movie reviews: the strange but interesting arthouse thriller beats the much-hyped big box office release for kids, this time. * "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince": Just one word for this--boooooooooring. A giant two-and-a-half-hour YAAAWN....