Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) declares: “But the fact is that I think that Mr. Steele is going to have to assess as to whether he can still lead the Republican Party as chairman of the Republican National Committee and make an appropriate decision.” That and other news from today’s Sunday talk shows in the TPMDC Sunday Roundup.
The Economist photoshops Obama to make him Carter on the Gulf.
For those who live in New York City, one of great feats — not because it was so hard but because it was such a good idea and so well executed — of urban planning in recent years is the construction of various ‘river parks’ around the city. Basically, as New York went out of the business of being an industrial entrepot and shipping was replaced by trucking, a lot of the city’s waterline was left to largely derelict docks and piers. But in recent years, the City has rebuilt many of these as public spaces, with a mix of parks and recreation areas.
There are few more unalloyed civic goods than public areas that are genuinely available to the public at large and are sufficiently maintained and respected that they can be used.
The part that I know best are the river parks along the lower west side of Manhattan. And this is often referred to as the City reclaiming its waterline. But in a oped column in the Times on Friday Nathan Ward explains that this is really a matter of the city claiming rather than reclaiming the waterline since historically the waterlines were never places where ‘respectable’ people really wanted to be or the City itself had much control over.
Some of this was a class issue. Work on the docks was hard work, often rooted in immigrant subcultures and just as often rooted in the world of the sea, which was always a world apart from the City proper — just as it is in almost every metropolis through history. But the docks were also crime-ridden and thus dangerous or controlled by the major organized crime families.
It’s fascinating look at the City’s past that most probably aren’t familiar with unless they having living memory back more than forty years.
Late Update: Here’s the first page (you may be able to see more if you’re at a subscribing university) of one of the classic articles on merchant seamen in 18th century America: “Jack Tar in the Streets: Merchant Seamen in the politics of Revolutionary America” by Jesse Lemisch. If anyone knows where there’s a full version available I can point people to let me know.
As the title suggests, it’s pretty hard to know where to start. But with Michael Steele’s latest swing for the fences, we’d thought we’d have a holiday review of all the earlier Steele gaffes and unintentional moments of honesty that have made Michael Steele unquestionably the most entertaining party chairman in recent memory.
And to think, when Steele beat the racially-challenged Katon Dawson in the race for GOP party chair back in January 2009 there was rending of garments at TPM HQ because we couldn’t imagine he could ever produce as good a copy as Dawson.
Republicans block any measures to buoy or resuscitate economy, call sputtering economy evidence of superiority of Republican policies, reap political benefit. Rinse. Restart.
(Of course, help from right-leaning Dems a critical part of the equation.)
See the video after the jump — a fireworks display in Palmyra, PA gone seriously wrong. 11 injuries, thankfully no fatalities. Read More
After Sharron Angle scrubbed her campaign website of her most extreme policy positions as part of her post-primary makeover, the Harry Reid campaign republished chunks of her old website as ‘The Real Sharron Angle’. Now Angle has threatened to sue Reid’s campaign for publishing her old positions.
Rep. Denny Rehberg (R-MT) is suing the Billings fire department for not getting a fire out quick enough and letting it burn some trees on a subdivision he owns.
Boehner seems to be opening the door to bringing back President Bush’s failed plan to partially phase-out Social Security as part of the GOP program if they take back the majority.