Damn, new video emerges of Grimm’s confrontation with that reporter. This is definitely the most disturbing.
Over at TPM Cafe’s Book Club today, Amanda Ripley, author of The Smartest Kids In The World, questions Obama’s claim from last night’s State of the Union speech that America is “better positioned” than any other country: “It was the kind of rhetoric you’d hear 20 years ago and not think twice. (In fact, President Bill Clinton used the exact same line in a 1995 speech, right after he praised this wonderful thing call the Internet.) But at this particular moment in time, that bold claim did make me think twice. Is Obama right?”
Don’t forget to join us for an author chat with Ripley this Friday at noon. (sub. req.)
Pete Seeger had been a really old guy for as long as I can remember. One of those people who simply don’t die. Like Nelson Mandela. Of course, our perceptions of age change with time. Even so, nearing 45 myself, Pete Seeger was legitimately old for most of my life. For me, because of my own interests and affinities, I cannot help seeing Seeger somewhat through the prism of Bob Dylan who he crossed paths with, dramatically, for just three or four years in the early 1960s. But of course he was much, much more than that and managed to touch an amazing number of different courses and rivulets of American history over almost a century of life.
There are few laugh-out-loud moments in a night of pre-programmed coverage of the president’s State Of The Union speech, but this Fox News focus group expressing genuine confusion at Obama’s executive action to offer more retirement savings options for poor people was one for me.
“I’m left scratching my head all night, ‘What is this?'” Gee, why would poor people need more retirement savings options?
Apparently Republican leadership wasn’t too impressed with Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul’s personal response to the president’s State of the Union speech, with leadership aides calling Paul’s soapboxing “blatant” self-promotion.
Fox News host Martha MacCallum denied the existence of a gender pay gap: “Many women make exactly what they’re worth.” I wonder how her pay compares to other male Fox News hosts?
Mark Murphy, the guy who lost to Grimm in 2012, says he believes steroids are behind the Congressman’s frequent blow-ups.
We’ve heard about mounting domestic energy – and oil production in the US. Check out this number. Since 2006 the number of crude oil shipments move around the US by rail has gone up by over 8300%.
Of all the places to achieve a top-tier education system, Poland might be the most surprising. After all, it wasn’t so long ago that the country was, as Amanda Ripley writes in an excerpt from her book The Smartest Kids In The World, a “communist backwater.” She writes about their path to success.
Join Ripley for a chat (sub. req.) this Friday at noon.
The Wall Street Journal says the brouhaha over the Perkins letter to the editor shows that he has a point about the coming progressive Holocaust about the 1%.