grrr!

I am beyond frustrated with Congressional Democrats and liberals in general. ( Read more... )

really hard to say which is the bigger management disaster--NUFC or DCU?

Newcastle United have sacked Chris Hughton from his position as manager.

The club have put reserve team boss and ex-Magpies striker Peter Beardsley in charge of first team affairs.

Hughton's departure came a day after Newcastle lost 3-1 at West Brom, a result which left them 11th in the Premier League table.

The 51-year-old guided Newcastle back into the top flight last season but the club said it was looking for someone "with more managerial experience".

Alan Pardew, Martin Jol, Martin O'Neill and Alan Curbishley are the bookmakers' favourites to replace Hughton.

Former Tottenham boss Jol quit as manager of Dutch side Ajax on Monday.

Brought the team back from disaster, keeping them in mid-table, well liked by all the players and staff, fan favourite. Naturally they sacked him without even having a firm replacement; what else would the NUFC front office do?

(no subject)

In reading this article about a series of pro forma votes in the Senate, I revisited a question I've wondered about before: how much support is there for maintaining the filibuster in the Senate rules? Despite what many think, this is not a measure written into the Constitution as a protection of minority rights.

What do you think? Should it be eliminated, or should it be retained?



Editorial wince: "Except now, the Seante not usually require the stand-up-and-talk part." Really? Really. Someone at the Post can't proof better than that?

I *like* this guy

[NYC Mayor Michael] Bloomberg identified the symptoms of dysfunctional politics: partisan gridlock, political pandering, legislative influence peddling, finger-pointing, blame games and endless attacks. Democrats, he said, lost the 2010 elections for the same reasons Republicans lost in 2006 and 2008. They "spent more time and energy conducting partisan warfare than forging centrist solutions to our toughest economic problems."

The political parties, he argued, fuel the discontent instead of finding ways to improve people's lives. "They incite anger instead of addressing it, for their own partisan interests," he said. They follow the public mood rather than shape it.

"When did cooperation in government become treason?" he asked. "The new 'politics as usual' is making a mockery of our democracy and a mess of our country. We've got to stop it - because we're paying a heavy price. In fact, right now, we are falling behind the world in education, technology, economic opportunity-even life expectancy."

He praised the agreement between President Obama and congressional Republicans to extend the Bush tax cuts for two years and extend unemployment benefits for 13 months. But he chastised politicians in Washington for not moving immediately to take up the recommendations of the national debt and deficit commission. "We need more than a commission and more than lip service," he said. "We need results. And not next year or the year after but now."

(no subject)

And so some of the most powerful lessons of the war years, and the events leading to the election of Abraham Lincoln, remain elusive. The Civil War taught us, as a nation, our patterns of argument, our impatience with hypocrisy, our sense that every election is an apocalypse. It taught us how to be stupid, how to provoke our enemies, how to resist modernity, how to fight on after logic and argument have failed.

A thoughtful piece in the Post on the legacy of the Civil War

(no subject)

This is a big, diverse country. Not everybody agrees with us. I know that shocks people. You know, the New York Times editorial page does not permeate across all of America. Neither does the Wall Street Journal editorial page. Most Americans, they're just trying to figure out how to go about their lives and how can we make sure that our elected officials are looking out for us.

And that means, because it's a big, diverse country and people have a lot of complicated positions, it means that in order to get stuff done, we're going to compromise. This is why FDR, when he started Social Security, it only affected widows and orphans. You did not qualify. And yet now it is something that really helps a lot of people.

When Medicare was started, it was a small program. It grew. Under...under the criteria that you just set out, each of those were betrayals of some abstract ideal.

This country was founded on compromise. I couldn't go through the front door at this country's founding. And, you know, if we were really thinking about ideal positions, we wouldn't have a union.

from some of President Obama's comments at a Tuesday press conference on the tax plan

This is MY president. I love this guy, I admire him, and I support him. I just wish to hell the rest of his party would support him too.