Here is a point of view that you don’t often hear anywhere else.

It is easy to be a skeptic about this presentation. Just read the comments on YouTube. However, if we act like Republicans to the rest of the world we are never going to get anywhere. As soon as Iran shows the slightest hint that they are willing to negotiate, we ask them for more.

I hope the right wingers in this country and Israel do not get to defeat the attempt for Iran and the US to start talking to each other. Unlike with dealing with the Republicans in this country who show every evidence of having no common ground with the Democrats, I’d like to see if straightforward discussions with Iran can lead to something positive.

McClatchy DC has the article Malala Yousafzai tells Obama drones are ‘fueling terrorism’.

In a statement released after the meeting, Malala said she was honored to meet with Obama, but that she told him she’s worried about the effect of U.S. drone strikes. (The White House statement didn’t mention that part.)

“I thanked President Obama for the United States’ work in supporting education in Pakistan and Afghanistan and for Syrian refugees,” she said in the statement. “I also expressed my concerns that drone attacks are fueling terrorism. Innocent victims are killed in these acts, and they lead to resentment among the Pakistani people. If we refocus efforts on education it will make a big impact.”

I wonder if Obama said, “You are right, but it feels so good to claim we got some terrorists. It is so hard to put aside the instant gratification, and worry about the long term consequences.  Right now, I have to live with the long term consequences of what some fool predecessor of mine did.  I have a right to leave some foul long term consequences to my successors.”

The Atlantic has the article 3 Reasons ‘Saving Face’ Is Overrated by Eric Liu.  He expresses exactly what it is that drives me crazy about thoughts of saving face in the current political situation.

And what about President Obama? He isn’t blameless in the metastasis of this crisis. But the pattern of his dealings with congressional Republicans actually underscores the danger of caring too much about face when the other side cares too little. He tried in recent years to negotiate rationally and earnestly on taxes and spending, to give the other side something they could call a win, all the while finding that he was yielding more than he was gaining. (Remember, the funding “victory” he seeks right now would maintain Paul Ryan’s sequestration spending levels). Obama’s reward for this earnestness was a shutdown. This explains why he’s taking a hard line this time, and why his former strategist David Plouffe now concedes that by accommodating too much in the past Obama only encouraged GOP intransigence. If there’s a face-related risk for the president now, it lies only in caving.

The Republicans ought to be talking about how much punishment they are willing to take rather than getting a fig leaf to cover over their utter surrender.

For a party that always puts a priority on punishing bad behavior, this is a time for them to take what is coming to them.

Truth Out has the editorial The American Public’s Shocking Lack of Policy Knowledge is a Threat to Progress and Democracy .

The reality of a massively uninformed public, though, is simply incongruous with this vision of a progressive future. So long as colossal swaths of the population are in the dark about the major policy issues of our time, the political scene will be ripe for ultra-right-wing demagogues and faux-populists to thwart progress at every turn. Progressives have to confront the fact that, technically, Republicans are right when they say that the ACA is “unpopular” or that “the American people” want a balanced budget amendment. This has to change. The vibrancy and legitimacy of our democratic culture depend on it.

This could have been labelled “A Progressive Faces Reality”.

I doubt that the level of misinformation is much more than it has been historically.  Yellow journalism is nothing new.  If progressives want the public to be better informed, they cannot depend on someone else to do the job.

You think you’ve got pets? On October 12, 2013, we had the first actual test of our bear proof bird feeder.  All I had at hand when the test occurred was a still camera.  I have put the pictures I took into the video below as best I could.

Well, at least the bird feeder is still standing. The bear did manage to shake a fair amount of bird seed to the ground. That probably means, he (or she) will be back for another try. It will be interesting to see what the bird feeder looks like tomorrow morning.

We had the same type of bird feeder that is atop the pole, but on its normal stand that is about 5 feet tall. At the beginning of the season, it was attacked and knocked to the ground. We didn’t do any bird feeding over the summer. In the fall, we straightened out the bird feeder and reinstalled it next to the bear proof one which was empty and had been empty all summer. Within two days the bear came back and dealt it a fatal blow.

My friend, RichardH, suggested some music to accompany this video:

This was too cute to just take the music and leave out its video.

See what happens when the Bear Revisits The Not So Bear Proof Bird Feeder.

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart has an extended interview with the Secretary of HEW, Kathleen Sebelius.

The interview is not as bad as originally reported.  They do have a little trouble communicating. Jon asks a question that Kathleen does not answer satisfactorily for him. They go several rounds where she cannot understand what her answer is not delivering to his satisfaction, and he cannot understand why she doesn’t address the concern in his question. Actually there may be two rounds of this with two different questions.  (Or maybe it is three. You decide on the exact number.) She does at least finally get around to satisfying him (or at least me) on some of these questions.

Exclusive – Kathleen Sebelius Extended Interview Pt. 1

Exclusive – Kathleen Sebelius Extended Interview Pt. 2

The Real News Network has the video Reid: Everything Is On The Negotiating Table.

At least one of our representatives has the right attitude:

“Everything is not on the table for me, number one,” said Representative Mike Capuano (D-MA). “Number two, more importantly, Democrats have already compromised. As far as I’m concerned, we’ve already compromised too much.”

If you look this up on the internet, I am pretty sure that the phrase “snatching defeat from the jaws of victory” will have a one word definition “Democrat”.

Get ready for the Grand Betrayal.

The Institute for New Economic Thinking has the article and video William Janeway: Can China Innovate at the Frontier? The sections that I have chosen to excerpt below do have a decidedly American focus. For those who have doubts that China can become an innovator at the frontier, view the video below. It won’t answer the question, but I hope it will make you less sure that you know the answer.

At the frontier, economic growth has been driven by successive processes of trial and error and error and error: upstream exercises in research and invention, and downstream experiments in exploiting the new economic space opened by innovation. Each of these activities necessarily generates much waste along the way, such as dead-end research programs, useless inventions, and failed commercial ventures. In between, the innovations that have repeatedly transformed the architecture of the market economy, from canals to the Internet, have required massive investment to construct networks whose value in use could not be imagined at the outset of deployment.
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The U.S. is suffering the consequences of a generation-long effort to render the state illegitimate as an economic actor. Moreover, the nation is uniquely distinguished by the widespread denial of the reality of climate change and the rejection of global warming as a motive for aggressive state action of any sort. And Europe, where climate change and the need for a state-sponsored response are both generally accepted, remains mired in its self-contradictory commitment to “expansionary fiscal austerity.”

New Economic Perspectives has the article I Have Seen the Next Big Thing, and it is Mariana Mazzucato by Dan Kervick.  The article describes the main points of a lecture that Mariana Mazzucato gave at the London School of Economics.  If you don’t have time to watch the video, then read this article. The end of his article summarizes by saying:

In these doleful and pessimistic times in the United States, where fear and loathing of  government is endemic across so much of the political spectrum, and where various anti-state ideas favoring localism, privatization, voluntarism, self-reliance, deregulation and desupervision remain so popular on the right and the left, it might seem impossible for Mazzucato’s call for an economically activist, mission-oriented government to get a foothold. But I am convinced the ideas Mazzucato is advancing are indeed the Next Big Thing. Americans will ultimately reject failure and stagnation, as they always have in the past; and as awareness grows that our current failures are due to insufficient ambition for mission-oriented state investment, and unequal distribution of the fruits of that investment, the tide will turn back toward public enterprise and ambitious government.

I know few people will have the  time to invest 90 minutes to view the video, but for those who can make the investment, the rewards will be great.

One of the interesting links in the comments to the above article is to The Institute For New Economic Thinking interview Mazzucato and Wray: Making Finance Work for Innovation.

Talking Points Memo has the article The House GOP’s Little Rule Change That Guaranteed A Shutdown.

Under normal House rules, according to House Democrats, once that bill had been rejected again by the Senate, then any member of the House could have made a motion to vote on the Senate’s bill. Such a motion would have been what is called “privileged” and entitled to a vote of the full House. At that point, Democrats say, they could have joined with moderate Republicans in approving the motion and then in passing the clean Senate bill, averting a shutdown.

But previously, House Republicans had made a small but hugely consequential move to block them from doing it.

Here’s the rule in question:

When the stage of disagreement has been reached on a bill or resolution with House or Senate amendments, a motion to dispose of any amendment shall be privileged.

In other words, if the House and Senate are gridlocked as they were on the eve of the shutdown, any motion from any member to end that gridlock should be allowed to proceed. Like, for example, a motion to vote on the Senate bill. That’s how House Democrats read it.

But the House Rules Committee voted the night of Sept. 30 to change that rule for this specific bill. They added language dictating that any motion “may be offered only by the majority Leader or his designee.”

So unless House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) wanted the Senate spending bill to come to the floor, it wasn’t going to happen. And it didn’t.

Now I see how this shutdown is all President Obama’s fault – NOT.

2013/10/12 I received a challenge to the veracity of this story in a comment on a friends’s Facebook page.

Chuck PriceRoger, I based my information off the actual House proceedings website, which details all activities of the House, including all votes, with yea and nay counts by party. Simple research from the source, not from slanted coverage by the media. I’m sure you can do the same if you choose and educate yourself. And to both you and Steve, any opinions based on Talking Points Memo is immediately suspect. That is as biased to the left as Fox is biased to the right.

My first response was:

Are you referring to the 11:36:44 P.M. item in the list of Legislative Activities for the House of Representatives for September 30, 2013 – Mr. Sessions filed a report from the Committee on Rules on H. Res. 368?

H.RES.368
Latest Title: Relating to consideration of the joint resolution (H.J. Res. 59) making continuing appropriations for fiscal year 2014, and for other purposes.

If so, do you know what was in that report?

My second response was:

How do you interpret the words in the report from the rules committee?

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/cpquery/R…

Section 2 of the resolution provides that any motion pursuant to
clause 4 of rule XXII relating to H.J. Res. 59 may be offered only
by the Majority Leader or his designee

Committee Reports Search Results – THOMAS (Library of Congress)

thomas.loc.gov

–RELATING TO CONSIDERATION OF THE JOINT RESOLUTION (H.J. RES. 59) MAKING CONTINUING APPROPRIATIONS FOR FISCAL YEAR 2014, AND FOR OTHER PURPOSES

 

 

 

 

I recognize that the words quoted above from the report are subject to interpretation and that further research can be carried out. I am no professional investigative journalist who gets paid for dogged research. If you have some evidence that this needs further research, then “speak now or forever hold your peace”.

2013/10/13

I did look at Rules of the House of Representatives, issued January 3, 2013. I was trying to find an explicit statement that corroborated the part of the Talking Point Memo story that said:

Under normal House rules, according to House Democrats, once that bill had been rejected again by the Senate, then any member of the House could have made a motion to vote on the Senate’s bill. Such a motion would have been what is called “privileged” and entitled to a vote of the full House. At that point, Democrats say, they could have joined with moderate Republicans in approving the motion and then in passing the clean Senate bill, averting a shutdown.

As I looked back to find the above quote, I also stumbled on the quote

Here’s the rule in question:

When the stage of disagreement has been reached on a bill or resolution with House or Senate amendments, a motion to dispose of any amendment shall be privileged.

Perhaps, armed with these words, I will be able to find the evidence.

2013/10/13

Yes armed with the exact words, I found on page 36 of The Rules of the House of Representatives

4. When the stage of disagreement
has been reached on a bill or resolution
with House or Senate amendments, a
motion to dispose of any amendment
shall be privileged.

This is part of Rule XXII. You can read the verbiage around the words yourself, and then you can interpret them to mean something that supports your point of view, no matter what that point of view is.