President Obama Shows Authentic Class

President Obama showed real class tonight, not taking the easy road of throwing the previous administration that falsely and blindly entrenched us in a costly war in Iraq under the proverbial bus.

I wonder, perhaps, if he was too gentle, but that's just me.

I thought the most impressive moment came at the end of the speech when, recounting soldiers who gave their lives in noble service, President Obama became (if just a bit) choked up. Sadly, people need to see him emote and act less stoic.

It will be interesting to see his opponents find reasons to find fault with the President's duty and mission to close out these wars and solve our economic woes.

Gay Marriage is Now a Conservative Cause

Thus says Steve Schmidt, former campaign manager for Senator John McCain's 2008 Presidential campaign.

It would be wonderful and remarkable if Republicans showed the courage to back this basic issue of personal and legal freedom . . . a courage that Democrats have largely lacked, including this White House.

Former RNC Chair Comes Out

Ken Mehlman, President George W. Bush's 2004 campaign manager and Chairman of the Republican National Committee from 2005 to 2007, has made it public that he, in fact, is gay and says that he looks forward to advocating for gay marriage rights.

TDS Asks if FOXNews is Evil or Stupid

[click the image to see the clip]

Sorry, conservatives, but it's a powerful question. In this case, is FOXNews stupid or evil? If you have a third possibility, I'd love to hear about it in the comments.

CBO Comes Out for Stimulus

Reuters is reporting that:

Stimulus added millions of jobs in Q2

Tue, Aug 24 2010
By Andy Sullivan
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The massive U.S. stimulus package put millions of people to work and boosted national output by hundreds of billions of dollars in the second quarter, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said on Tuesday.
CBO's latest estimate indicates that the stimulus effort, which remains a political hot potato ahead of the November congressional elections, may have prevented the sluggish U.S. economy from contracting between April and June.
CBO said President Barack Obama's stimulus boosted real GDP in the quarter by between 1.7 percent and 4.5 percent, adding at least $200 billion in economic activity.
During that time the economy was growing at an anemic pace.
Gross domestic product rose just 0.6 percent during that period, according to preliminary Commerce Department data which economists expect will be revised sharply lower when new figures are released on Friday.
The massive package of tax cuts, construction spending and enhanced safety-net benefits was passed in February 2009 in the midst of the deepest recession since the 1930s.
It raised employment by between 1.4 million and 3.3 million jobs during the second quarter of this year, CBO estimated.
Measured another way, CBO said the stimulus increased the number of full-time equivalent jobs by up to 4.8 million, as part-time workers shifted to full-time work or employers offered more overtime work.
CBO said the package, officially known as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, would cost $814 billion, down from its previous estimate of $862 billion. The lower figure was thanks largely to health-care subsidies that cost less than anticipated. CBO initially estimated the bill would worsen budget deficits by $787 billion.
Other than that, the estimate varies only slightly from the budget office's forecast released in May.
With both the House of Representatives and the Senate up for grabs in November, Democrats hope voters will give them credit for breathing some life into the economy, which had begun to weaken while Republican George W. Bush was still president.
"The Recovery Act is working to rescue the economy from eight years of failed economic policy and rebuild it even stronger than before," Vice President Joe Biden said in a prepared statement. "It's impossible for even the most cynical, bent-on-rooting-for-failure critics to deny."
Republicans, who almost universally opposed the stimulus, have criticized it as wasteful and ineffective.
Some 67 percent of those surveyed in a Reuters/Ipsos poll last month said Obama is not focusing enough on job creation. Voters in that survey said the economy and jobs are the most pressing issues facing the country.
CBO said it expects the effects of the stimulus to gradually diminish over the remainder of the year.

North Haven News Update!

The North Haven News segment for August 18, 2010 is an informative piece about changes to curbside pick-up, the transfer station, and other recycling and waste removal issues. I found it very informative. Great job as always, Chris!

We've Got a Dog!

The New Haven Register is reporting that North Haven is getting its first police dog! And his name is Zeus! I think it's good for us to be independent in this regard.

"Going Mad in Herds"

Maureen Dowd's latest column, while a bit too clever in the beginning, is a pretty good indictment of where a portion of the national psyche seems to reside just now, focusing on a recent up-tick in the false and bigoted belief that our President is Muslim.

Definitely worth a read.

Summer Reading

If you or your children have not completed your summer reading yet, now is the time!

I'm currently working on a thriller or two myself.

One way or another, please make sure that your children do their necessary reading, for school and for their intellectual development.

Even better, be sure to let your children catch you reading. Your literacy has a very big impact on theirs, which in turn has a big impact on their future success.

What are you reading?

How Much Coverage is Enough?

Depending on what you watched Wednesday night, you got very different impressions of the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq:

Nowhere was the difference between the cable news networks on starker display than in prime-time coverage on the night the last American combat brigade left Iraq following a war that started seven years and five months ago.

MSNBC devoted its entire prime-time footprint to the story, with Richard Engel riding with the troops in a specially equipped vehicle and host Rachel Maddow based in Baghdad. Keith Olbermann anchored the coverage from a New York studio.

Fox News Channel devoted just under 10 minutes to the story, much of it during Shepard Smith's 7 p.m. newscast. The network spent 45 minutes discussing the potential construction of an Islamic cultural center near ground zero, while that story wasn't mentioned on MSNBC at all. CNN, meanwhile, spent an hour on each story.

The news decisions led critics of Fox and MSNBC to suggest politics was at play in the coverage decisions.

Source

Jon Stewart's Bold Take

I thought this fair-minded, bipartisan approach to the Ground Zero "mosque" issue was exactly what both sides need.



[click the image to see the clip]

While I'm on a Roll! TEACHERS...

I saw a discussion about teachers on Chris's blog this past week that I found interesting, and the conversation seemed to stop at a really crucial point. I would have liked to have seen it go forward.

Are teachers, overall, liberal or conservative?

A link was posted by one of the commenters ("Fed Up" or is it just "Fed" now?) showing research to this effect, and I found it really captivating. This research, conducted by the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) and the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) over the last several decades here in America, had some really interesting perspectives on where teachers fall on the political spectrum - in both directions - being both more conservative and more liberal than the regular public, depending upon the issue and the relative level of education to which they are compared.

I would highly recommend the read if you are either concerned about the state of education (as a parent or educator yourself) or if you have reason to fear the politicizing of the classroom, which I think we can all agree is a terrible thing, barring intolerance, in either direction.

Here it is - http://educationnext.org/american-teachers/

Thanks to Kyle Swartz and the Citizen!

http://northhaven.ctcitizens.com/story/north-haven%E2%80%99s-first-blog-news-junkie%E2%80%99s-%E2%80%98must-read%E2%80%99

I am ashamed to admit that this blog has not received much of my attention in a consistent fashion. And quite honestly, no one has been clamoring at my inbox for my return, which is fine by me either way.

Anyways, I wanted to write because I was pleased to learn that I got a mention in today's article about Chris's blog, The North Haven Way. No doubt because either Chris mentioned it or Mr. Swartz was familiar with my small body of work. In any event, all notice is appreciated.

I have always applauded Chris on his dedication and persistence. We all owe him a debt of gratitude for his site and its forum, whether or not we all share common views.

If you have an interest in this blog's continuing, don't be shy. Let me know. :-)