Category Archives: politics

Fire Them All

GM CEO Wagoner to step down at White House Request (AP via Yahoo! news) I have the vaguest of recollections of Ronald Reagan firing the air traffic controllers in 1981; I remember it happening, but I had no idea what it all meant. (I was five years old at the time.) I do remember that Dad was deeply upset by it, and it was one of the many things Reagan did that eventually drove Dad to avoid politics and become bitterly cynical about them. I…

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Look, a Diversion

I caught President Obama’s address to the Lincoln Society Banquet last night, and amid Obama turning the address towards his efforts to get the stimulus bill passed — something that I thought was kind of risky and unnecessary — it was hard not to be struck by his mention of how after the Civil War, Lincoln ordered that no Confederate soldier should be punished. The parallel with liberals’ feelings about prosecuting the possible crimes of the previous administration didn’t need to be said, and like…

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“Wasteful and Non-Stimulative”

Feinstein joins Senate majority in excluding arts from stimulus package (Mike Boehm/Los Angeles Times blogs) I’m not sure I quite believe that we are already in the worst financial crisis in my lifetime, but if we aren’t there yet, we’re damn close to it. At times like this it becomes hard for artists like myself to push for increased arts funding, especially those of us who live in the part of the country getting hammered the most by the collapse of the automobile industry. People…

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Fads Fade Fast

Because the majority of my students fall between the ages of eighteen to twenty, I spend a fair amount of time on YouTube and Websites oriented towards that young adult demographic, so I can get a bit of a handle on what is popular in that age group. I’d watch television, but I just can’t stomach American Idol and its ilk, and the radio on my stereo — like so many parts of it — just isn’t working that well right now. I really need…

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20, January

I believe that I have watched every inauguration that featured a transition between presidents in my lifetime. (Okay, my memory’s fuzzy on 1977, but I was less than a year old then.) I’m sure that I didn’t catch Bush in 2005, but I remember watching him in 2001. Although my interest in politics has certainly waxed and waned over the years — to be honest, I feel it waning now — there is something about these transitions of power that I guess I feel obliged…

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