Brooke is competing for a summer exchange trip to Germany and I am running around today signing papers and delivering applications and transcripts so we don’t miss the deadline. Wish her luck! I’m just taking a break for lunch. The kid is running me ragged.
In the meantime, check out the post by Brad DeLong about Noam Scheiber’s upcoming book (H/T atrios). If you are at the tail end of the babyboom generation, you’ll be outraged no matter what your political compass is.
Filed under: General | Tagged: aatg prize, barack Obama is no friend to middle class, Brooke, Christina Romer, German' Noam Scheiber, Social Security |
The Confluence 
Good luck to the kiddlie – and you!
I know you’ll love this…Larry Summers (and HRC) are being suggested to head the world bank. (The fact that the two names could ever be used this close together is such a joke.:
Summers as head of the world bank? Just blow us up!
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-15/hillary-clinton-summers-said-to-be-leading-contenders-to-head-world-bank.html
{{snort}}. They so want to secure a place for her as soon as possible. It’s too delicious. She would have raked the bishops over the coals over contraception.
The rumors must be flying again.
Since HRC is clearly smart enough to know what she wants to do, and when, and where, and why; I will assume that if she goes to the World Bank, it will be for reasons of her own in pursuit of her own choice of goals.
But why not Larry Summers for World Bank? He is a perfect expression of everything the World Bank stands for, ever stood for, and ever will stand for. Might as well have Truth-In-Staffing.
That was a great post & summary of what Obama’s been dealing with. People wonder how things get screwed up, bad crooked advisers.
… That Obama appointed. Didn’t you see who Scheiber assigned the blame to? He blames Obama for trying to make deals with the Republicans behind closed doors. He is not a very good politician. No, no, don’t try to blame only his advisors.
In case you missed it….
“[W]hile internal staff disputes did play a role, Scheiber ascribes blame ultimately to the president. As he concludes:
[T]he Jobs Act punctuated the chronic confusion about the connection between politics and governing. Too often, the two activities were treated as an either-or proposition in the West Wing. Obama generally believed the way to pass his program was to engage earnestly with the opposition, not take his case public. A president never has more leverage with Congress than when he’s riling up voters, but Obama rarely exploited the massive stature of his office as a tool for influencing legislation.”
I think the paid bots are coming out already.
To paraphrase something FDR once said: Plouffe may be a piece of shit bastard, but he’s Obama’s piece of shit bastard.
Viel Glück an Brooke!
And … maybe she’ll enjoy watching a wonderful documentary, “Dancing Dreams” showing a group of young Germans – with no prior dance experience – being taught the Pina Bausch piece “Kontakthof”. Absolutely lovely young people, speaking a very- easy- to- understand German.
Cool! Is it new? Available on Netflix?
Sorry, I don’t know. But it’s available on DVD. Can’t search, as my computer acts up when I click on some of these German links. The screen splits up in two with (part of) The Confluence on the left and (part of) the site I’m linking to on the right! Bizarre. 😯
But if you succeed finding it I think you’ll enjoy watching it too. The piece they are rehearsing is deeply moving in so many ways – as are the young people participating.
I just barely went to a part of Europe once as part of a tour group.
As part of that, we stopped over in Frankfurt (sp?) Airport. Real granite floors, highly polite professional security people with non-intrusive wands and discrete submachine guns, etc. After your daughter sees that airport and then sees our airports again, she may well ask: “why can’t we have nice things?” It could be the start of a political enlightenment journey.
If she gets the time, I hope she gets a chance to see Czechia, Slovakia, Hungary, etc. . . . parts of the Old Hapsburg Lands.