The famous French Quarter Coffee Shop by JK Schwehm
Morning Conflucians!!!
A quick morning post from me on what I’m reading over my break!!!
This from Bonne Erbe: Obama Not Comfortable With Women in Basketball, Golf … or Anywhere Else
Now we see reports that gender-insensitivity charges have resonated with the Obama White House. According to Politics Daily, the president dragged chief domestic policy adviser Melody Barnes to the golf course on Sunday, and she became the first female to join his golf foursome since he took office. The event produced a photo op of global proportions.
President Obama could invite Chamique Holdsclaw to the private White House basketball court and Billie Jean King to play tennis with him. I still wouldn’t believe he’s any more comfortable dealing with women or concerned about “women’s” issues than the dearly departed former Sen. Jesse Helms. President Obama talks the talk a lot better and a lot louder than Helms. But Jesse Helms was so rooted in his atavist traditions, he chose to remain true to his misogyny rather than pose for cameras with faux female golfing partners. President Obama must hide the side of his personality that is clearly uncomfortable with women because he needs their votes much more than Helms ever did.
Whether it was his treatment of Hillary Clinton on the campaign trail (as in his condescending remark that she was “likeable enough”) or his clearly career-oriented mate who has been toned down and remorphed into a Stepford Wife, I just don’t get the impression this man is comfortable with women. Nor do I believe he cares about them beyond needing women’s votes. It’s an act and a thoroughly see-through, amateur one at that.
This from Carrie Budoff Brown: Defections have some Democrats casting about for Plan B
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s appeals for party unity landed with a thud Tuesday with the very group he needs for his public-option push to pay off: centrists who hold the key to health reform.
And not just any centrists but one who makes liberals see red: Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), who said Tuesday that he’d back a GOP attempt to block the bill from moving to final passage.
Lieberman’s comments dealt a major setback to Reid’s push to pass a bill with a public insurance option, so much so that other Senate Democrats — notably Delaware Sen. Tom Carper — were already sketching out a Plan B to get the votes, most likely through a more watered-down version of the public option.
It wasn’t just Lieberman. Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.), who faces a tough reelection, said Tuesday she was reluctant to sign on with Reid’s plan, too. Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) won’t give any answer until he sees the final language.
and This from Luigi Zingales: Pro-Market Populism Is GOP’s Out
For 30 years, the Republican Party dominated American political life, winning five of the seven presidential elections before 2008. But the GOP has taken its lumps of late, culminating in its loss of Congress in 2006 and the White House last November.
The party’s future direction is unclear.
But as America struggles to emerge from a financial crisis, any renewal of the right will require Republicans to rethink their approach to the economy. An agenda focused chiefly on tax cuts, as the Republicans’ has been since Ronald Reagan’s presidency, is no longer enough.
digg!!! tweet!!! share!!!
Add to: Facebook | Digg | Del.icio.us | Stumbleupon | Reddit | Blinklist | Twitter | Technorati | Furl | Newsvine
Filed under: General, Morning News edition, morning news | Tagged: Bonnie Erbe, Healthcare Plan B, Luigi Zingales Republicans, Obama sexism, Reid
Regarding Melody Barnes and the golf outing….I wonder if she received permission from her preacher, her husband, her father and her doctor before she could play….
And did she wear a veil?
Fear not. republicans, you be back in the driver’s seat soon enough thanks to Obma and feckless congressional Democrats.
How is it a party in disgrace, who’s standard bearer left the White house with a 22% approval, can walk into the room and give Obama, Reid and Pelosi wedgies without even trying?
Off topic, but is the weather turning out to be okay in New Orleans? A few friends of mine are vacationing in the French Quarter, and one came down with a cold after arrival. Ooops, of course, I can just check the weather situation online!
I enjoy your posts, and have always had an interest in economics, although only one course in college in which I wrote a paper about Appalachia that was not as well received as I had hoped. I used to read the Economist regularly, and long ago figured out that the stock market is basically rigged, as is the whole country until we can get publicly financed elections: “We have the best government money can buy.” (Gore Vidal said that.)
Thanks for your ongoing education in a most pleasing manner!
we’ve got really great weather today! there may be a few showers tomorrow but I think the weekend will be okay. It’s been in the 60s which is chilly for here!!!
and thx for the nice comments!
It’s great reading your posts. I will be in New Orleans next week for a few days only, unfortunately. It will be my first trip to that wonderful city. Any suggestions on must sees, must eats, must visit? Thanks.
Take the Ferry over to the west bank and tour Mardi Gras World, it’s a fun touristy thing to do! Also, if you get a chance, go up the river road to tour a few plantations. I like laura and Oak valley a lot.
My favorite place to eat (really pricey) is Bayona. My favorite place to eat (local) is Dookie Chase’s.
Be sure to check out the music clubs on Frenchmen street … including Spotted Cat and the Apple Barrel.
Wow! Great prospective visits. I have always wanted to visit the Big Easy. Thanks.
Here’s a few recommendations for your visit:
Port of Call restaurant on Espanade (on the edge of the French Quarter) is a spectacular local eatery. Fantastic hamburger (w/ baked potato) – and if you are one to partake in drinks that more than accomplish their job, get the Huma Huma or Monsoon (like a Pat O’s Hurricane but 10x better) (http://portofcallnola.com/)
If you happen to get Uptown (down St. Charles Avenue around Tulane and Loyola Universities), stop in at Camellia Grill – a longtime popular greasy spoon. (http://www.roadfood.com/Restaurant/Reviews/2063/camellia-grill)
Two recent issues of Gambit Weekly would be good for you to check out:
The Best of New Orleans 2009:
(http://bestofneworleans.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A60275)
The Fall Restaurant Guide 2009:
(http://bestofneworleans.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A62962)
Thanks for all the tips. I really appreciate your input. Again, thanks……
Holy Molly!
Bonnie Erbe really took an axe to Obama.
Really. Go Bonnie!
Wow! I hope Bonnie Erbe doesn’t wake up with a dead horse head in her bed. She has had Obama’s number all along though.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/8328878.stm
for history buffs the map that changed the world.
Finding something like this makes me wonder what people were thinking back then. Was the world as screwed up as it is now?
WOMEN WITH INTELLIGENCE AND EXPERIENCE,MEN WHO SUPPORT THEM AND COUNTRY BEFORE PARTY ALWAYS
PUMAS,BUBBAS,EQUALISTS AND THOSE PEOPLE RULE
Yeah, it pretty much was and maybe more so—remember then they were burning women at the stake.
They still do.
Or close. Lashes and stoning
are nearly as bad. Same mentality.
There was a time last primary season ,
I thought that some of the obamabrats were going to pillory Hillary.
http://www.newscred.com/article/show/title/class-dismissed-teacher-had-no-pupils-in-school-for-19-years-4ae84eb711d5a/2201175#at
Even back in history you had to fight to save your job.
WOMEN WITH INTELLIGENCE AND EXPERIENCE,MEN WHO SUPPORT THEM AND COUNTRY BEFORE PARTY ALWAYS
PUMAS,BUBBAS,EQUALISTS AND THOSE PEOPLE RULE
More union-hating media reports… Boeing is probably building a production line in “business friendly” South Carolina. They are getting offered some very nice incentives AND getting the additional bonus of framing the choice as an IAM union problem.
Seattle Times
The comments tell the story. The IAM has pretty much lost the battle for public opinion with some help from the media and Boeing PR machine.
Nice editorial, telling it more like it is:
“So Boeing is threatening to jilt us (again). To run out on our nine decades of marriage with someone smarter? Better? More reliable?
Nope. With someone cheaper. So Boeing right now is paying less to build airplanes in South Carolina than we pay for cutting hair or shelving 3-pound jars of olives. How can we compete with that?
“It’s like they have people who used to work at Kmart, trying to build an airplane.”
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/text/2010148771.html
“It’s like they have people who used to work at Kmart, trying to build an airplane.”
and they are fine with that…FINE with it. If a planes goes down , so what? They don’t care. Their spreadsheets look so great!
Actually, the spreadsheets don’t look so great and that is why they are pointing fingers at the union and fishing for a new assembly line.
Boeing really seemed to loose their way when they stopped trying to make the best airplanes in the world and started trying to make money via the airplane business.
Well we Southerners are quick lerners. We lerned how to construct dem dar BMW’s and a ship ar too here’n thar. I reckon we mite havta do some ajustin’ and afiggerin’ to lern how to build em ar fancy whatchamacallit aero planes.
Too funny!
Actually, SC as a choice for starting a second assembly line is a good choice. There are lots of aircraft sub-contractors in SC so the skilled workforce is already there. It is also not a bad idea to have redundant systems in different parts of the country (from a business continutity perspective).
It is the BS about the union “causing” them to leave that I object to. They are preparing the stage to weaken the union for the next round of benefit and real-wage cuts that will be agreed to as a “win/win”. There seems to be a lot of public sympathy for union busting / blaming right now.
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1932806,00.html?xid=rss-world
How long is this country going to fall behind in gender equality.
Backtack hasn’t got a clue or the will to change things for women in this country.
At the rate of gender equality in this country my great, great,great ,great grand daughters might get ERA if they are lucky.
When will the women and the men who support them say ” enough is enough our time is now”
WOMEN WITH INTELLIGENCE AND EXPERIENCE,MEN WHO SUPPORT THEM AND COUNTRY BEFORE PARTY ALWAYS
PUMAS,BUBBAS,EQUALISTS AND THOSE PEOPLE RULE
This report is so discouraging. HRC would be leading us out of the wilderness. Her world work for women is so important and it is so sad that she does not have a bigger voice for us here at home.
From Erbe’s column:
Erbe is right, and yet Ms. Magazine can’t see through it.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-biz-unicare-illinois-oct28,0,3105864.story?track=rss
this sucks big time. Was this company part of the plan that backtrack worked on between voting present in the state senate?
WOMEN WITH INTELLIGENCE AND EXPERIENCE,MEN WHO SUPPORT THEM AND COUNTRY BEFORE PARTY ALWAYS
PUMAS,BUBBAS,EQUALISTS AND THOSE PEOPLE RULE
So why are they pulling out of Illinois and Texas—Unicare/Wellpoint? The article does not appear to give a reason that I can find.
they are supposed to have a press conference later today.
WOMEN WITH INTELLIGENCE AND EXPERIENCE,MEN WHO SUPPORT THEM AND COUNTRY BEFORE PARTY ALWAYS
PUMAS,BUBBAS,EQUALISTS AND THOSE PEOPLE RULE
They were small players in those markets. Looks like they want to do more business in states where they are one of the major players.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2009/10/28/financial/f082803D00.DTL&feed=rss.business
Lets see now:
backtrack announces over 4 billion for a smart energy grid
lord haw haw reid is running for reelection
conference held in Nevada
It does make you wonder, doesn’t it.?
WOMEN WITH INTELLIGENCE AND EXPERIENCE,MEN WHO SUPPORT THEM AND COUNTRY BEFORE PARTY ALWAYS
PUMAS,BUBBAS,EQUALISTS AND THOSE PEOPLE RULE
Who pays for all these Air Force 1 trips to campaign for Democrats? Do the candidate campaigns get charged or is it just our taxpayer dime at work for us?
Another note to taxpayers: You will soon be giving a 3%+ pay increase to all Federal workers, both civilian and military. In addition you will be awarding civil service workers improved retirement benefits.
Note to seniors: That federal worker cost of living raise has nothing to do with you so, take your $250 (if you get it), your Medicare cutbacks and STFU.
Obama and women: I would feel sorry for Mechelle but I am thinking she is the one woman who has his #, and calls it.
Genius point from the comments section of Maureen Dowd’s new column (http://community.nytimes.com/comments/www.nytimes.com/2009/10/28/opinion/28dowd.html?sort=recommended) :
7.
ORS
U.K
October 28th, 2009
9:10 am
HA. Looks like Obama has hoodwinked you again, Maureen. During the primaries, you gushed about how he had a softer, feminine management style, while Hillary was rough and dictatorial. And, now you are left outside to peer through the windows, as Obama re-creates Mad Men inside the White House.
I know you have a lot of problems with Hillary, but please don’t ever feed me this claptrap about how Obama was the real feminist candidate, and his victory was a leap ahead for women. The fact is that Obama’s presidency thus far has been pretty detrimental to women, both in terms of policy and symbolism. Policy-wise, ObamaCare, by not covering abortion, will deprive millions of poor women from basic reproductive health.
In terms of symbolism, Barack and Michelle have enacted possibly the most regressive husband/provider wife/nurturer dynamic since the 1950s, purely for political gain.
Recommended Recommended by 121 Readers
Everyone go to that link and recommend that damn comment haha!
I just went over and recommended the comment.
thanks for the tip
It seems more and more people are not buying the backtrack bs.
WOMEN WITH INTELLIGENCE AND EXPERIENCE,MEN WHO SUPPORT THEM AND COUNTRY BEFORE PARTY ALWAYS
PUMAS,BUBBAS,EQUALISTS AND THOSE PEOPLE RULE
…as Obama re-creates Mad Men inside the White House.
Ha! I maintain that Mad Men was created and broadcast to HELP sell Barry and his early 60’s world view …as was most everything else in ‘07
lol… West Wing’s Santos was the rehearsal
Ugh, Matt Santos was the most insufferable character in TV history! He completely ruined that show. First the West Wing, then the world.
I thought so, too.
I haven’t been reading here as much lately, so I apologize if this has been posted. Front Line did an eye opening account of Brooksley Born’s unsuccessful struggle to regulate derivatives (I’m pretty sure Dak has written about Brooksley in the past).
Anyway for anyone who might be interested, here’s a link to the entire program along with supplemental material:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/warning/view/
“In The Warning, veteran FRONTLINE producer Michael Kirk unearths the hidden history of the nation’s worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. At the center of it all he finds Brooksley Born, who speaks for the first time on television about her failed campaign to regulate the secretive, multitrillion-dollar derivatives market whose crash helped trigger the financial collapse in the fall of 2008.
“I didn’t know Brooksley Born,” says former SEC Chairman Arthur Levitt, a member of President Clinton’s powerful Working Group on Financial Markets. “I was told that she was irascible, difficult, stubborn, unreasonable.” Levitt explains how the other principals of the Working Group — former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan and former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin — convinced him that Born’s attempt to regulate the risky derivatives market could lead to financial turmoil, a conclusion he now believes was “clearly a mistake.”
Born’s battle behind closed doors was epic, …
“I walk into Brooksley’s office one day; the blood has drained from her face,” says Michael Greenberger, a former top official at the CFTC who worked closely with Born. “She’s hanging up the telephone; she says to me: ‘That was [former Assistant Treasury Secretary] Larry Summers. He says, “You’re going to cause the worst financial crisis since the end of World War II.”… [He says he has] 13 bankers in his office who informed him of this. Stop, right away. No more.’”
Greenspan, Rubin and Summers ultimately prevailed …
Now, with many of the same men who shut down Born in key positions in the Obama administration, The Warning reveals the complicated politics that led to this crisis and what it may say about current attempts to prevent the next one.”
From Born’s Front Line interview:
“… I wonder about the extent to which your gender affected what happened with the members of the working group, the other regulators. What do you think?
I don’t want to comment on that. I do think that some people, some men, may have problems in dealing with women as equals or listening to women’s voices, particularly dealing with their disagreement with them.
Arthur Levitt says, “You know, if she just would have gotten to know us, … maybe it would have gone a different way.” Arthur now expresses true affection for you and says what a lovely person [you are] and that he was wrong and you were right and all this. He says it on camera. But he says, “Oh, if only she would have –” What do you say?
I’m reminded of something that Michael Greenberger once said to me, which is, “They say you weren’t a team player, but I never saw them issue you a uniform.” And I didn’t feel as though I was being invited to be part of the team. …”
Brookley Born’s history has taken a lot of my time lately. The Frontline program was a real eye opener not only to her but Greenspan and Summers as well. From all I have read, she’s quite the go-getter and has always worked on women’s issues. Her history makes for good reading. Her predictions about our financial sytem makes for many regrets.
Brookley = Brooksley
Obama signs $680 billion defense policy bill
WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama says a $680 billion defense policy bill he signed into law proves that it’s possible to change the business-as-usual atmosphere in Washington.
This has me rolling on the floor.. HAHAHAHA!! and then taking a rubber mallet to my head going bong -bong and then sining ” la la la la .”
Black is White and War is peace and we have always been at war with Eurasia…..I need a drink!