governmentality

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What I'm Doing Monday: No Labels Kick-Off Event

All day Monday, I'll be covering the kick-off event for No Labels--a new organization advocating for citizens to put aside--not forget--their labels "to do what's best for America."  You can get a sense of the mission through a Washington Post op-ed by two founding members, David Frum and Bill Galston (and a sense of the discomfort of some by this response by Stanley Kurtz).

It's not a small event. For approximately 1,000 country-wide national members, some heavy hitters will be at the podium, including Mayor Michael Bloomberg, NYT columnist David Brooks, Senator Joe Lieberman, Senator Joe Manchin and a slew of MSNBCers (Dylan Ratigan, Mika Brzezinski, Joe Scarborough. You can read the full line-up here.

And you know they're serious when they come up with their own anthem.

It only took one conversation with Lisa Borders, one of the founding leaders of No Labels, for Akon to immediately understand the meaning of this movement’s message.  Never give up your label, just put it aside to do what’s best for America.  With lyrics like “See a man with a blue tie, see a man with a red tie; so how about we tie ourselves together and get it done,” Akon shares his passion for politicians to put the labels aside so we can find practical solutions to our nation’s problems. Akon stayed up all night to create this song and now you can listen to it for free and share the song to help inspire others to put their labels aside.

Check back here on Monday or follow me on Twitter for updates and for links to the articles I'm writing for a few different publications. 

 

WikiWorld

Beating Up Obama...In the Primaries

Matt Bai at the New York Times is stirring up trouble, suggesting that the left is looking for other 2012 primary candidates.

President Obama’s compromise with Republicans on extending tax cuts for the wealthy, which his self-described progressive critics see as a profound betrayal, is bound to intensify a debate that has been bubbling up on liberal blogs and e-mail lists in recent weeks — whether or not the president who embodied “hope and change” in 2008 should face a primary challenge in 2012.

He follows it up with:

The idea seems to have little momentum for now, not least because there isn’t an obvious candidate, and because such a challenge would seem to have about as much chance of success as, say, a reality show about David Hasselhoff.

One might think this is Bai debunking the likelihood, but it's followed by 14 graphs about how disappointing Obama is and who his likely opponents could be in the primary. Jeffrey Miron, Harvard economist and Cato senior fellow ran with the first graph and denounced the left as the "Loony Left."

Seriously? The Democratic Party would dump one its most talaned politicians, who happens also to be the first African-American president, and who is arguably the most liberal president since FDR, because he’s not liberal enough?  And after the liberal agenda took a serious beating in the recent elections?

Seriously?

I guess anything printed in the New York Times must be true--especially through selective reading.

The Miracle Toilet

Nicholas D. Kristof reports from Haiti about toilets that aim to address the sanitation problems that lead to cholera, while also providing fertilizer to help farmers.

 

Focus on the Family is Hiring!

If you're looking for work, James Dobson's evangelical Focus on the Family in Colorado Springs is looking for a Senior Associate Editor.

And just what are the qualifications?

So WikiLeaks is a Hostage Stand-Off Now?

So, Julian Assange is now threatening that if anything happens to him or the WikiLeaks website, he's going to release a "deluge" of secret documents.

Julian Assange will release a "poison pill" that contains a "deluge" of secret information if he is killed, arrested or his website is permanently shut down, Daily Mail reports.

"Due to recent attacks on our infrastructure, we've decided to make sure everyone can reach our content. As part of this process we're releasing archived copy of all files we ever released," WikiLeaks said in a message on its site.

As crazy as Julian Assange may be (and I'm sure this high-pressured situation is only making him crazier), WikiLeaks either has or had the potential to play a really important media role. And as an investigative journalist, I appreciate his role in authenticating documents.

But!

With this last bit, he's really lost some credibility among those who would have supported him. Instead of being in a position of power, he just looks weak, feeble and backed into a corner with this last threat. And that's what it looks like--a last (read: final) threat.

It also looks like a bluff. If he had another 250,000 documents as he's claiming, why hasn't he released them, or at least mentioned them until now?

Or, maybe he was predicting this exact moment and had always planned on using them in this hostage negotiation. And if that's the case, had he never planned on releasing them? And why would the negotiators trust him?

Time to Play Mad! As! Hell!!!

Sunday Talk Shows: 12/5/10

Lots happening on the Sunday talk shows this week, but ABC's This Week is stacked with more guests than I've seen in a long time. Looks like a staged fight on Afghanistan with a twist of Don't Ask, Don't Tell.

As for the rest? Plenty of lame duck session talk with some justification of obstruction.

ABC’s This Week: General Wesley Clark, Former NATO Supreme Allied Commander; R. Clarke Cooper, Executive Director of the Log Cabin Republicans; Tammy Schultz, Director of National Security and Joint Warfare at the Marine Corps War College; Lieutenant Colonel Bob Maginnis (Ret.), Senior Fellow of the Family Research Council; Elaine Donnelly, Center for Military Readiness; Zalmay Khalilzad, Former Ambassador to the United Nations and Afghanistan; Zbigniew Brzezinski, Former National Security Adviser; Sakena Yacoobi, Afghan institute of Learning; George Will, ABC News

NBC’s Meet the Press: Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY); Sen. John Kerry (D-MA); David Brooks, New York Times; Tom Friedman, New York Times; Katty Kay, BBC World News America; Mike Murphy,Republican Strategist

CBS’ Face the Nation: Senator Richard Durbin (D-Illinois); Senator Jon Kyl (R-Arizona); Nancy Cordes, CBS News Capitol Hill Correspondent; Jim VandeHei, Executive Editor of POLITICO

CNN's GPS with Fareed Zakaria: HBO's Bill Maher; Niall Ferguson of Harvard and the Hoover Institution; Richard Haass of the Council On Foreign Relations; Gillian Tett of the Financial Times

Fox News Sunday: Sen. Kent Conrad, (D-ND); Jeb Hensarling, (R-TX); Newt Gingrich, AEI Senior Fellow, Former Speaker of the House and Fox News Contributor

CNN’s State of the Union with Candy Crowley: Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT); Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR); Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN); Jon Wiener, author, “Gimme Some Truth: The John Lennon FBI Files”

CNN’s Reliable Sources with Howard Kurtz: Torie Clarke, former Pentagon spokesperson; David Rohde, author, “A Rope and a Prayer”; Kristen Mulvihill, author, “A Rope and a Prayer”; Erica Hill of CBS News

Washington Week with Gwen Ifill and National Journal: John Harwood of CNBC and The New York Times; Doyle McManus of the Los Angeles Times; Yochi Dreazen of National Journal

Bloomberg’s Political Capital with Al Hunt: Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal

NBC’s The Chris Matthews Show: Andrea Mitchell, NBC News; Andrew Sullivan, The Atlantic; John Heilemann, New York Magazine; Susan Davis, National Journal

Washington Watch with Roland Martin: Chairman of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers Austan Goolsbee, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, and Magic and Cookie Johnson

Brooklyn's Habana Outpost Serves Sustainability All Day

Solar power, recycled refuse and staff creativity has turned a parking lot into one of the most truly sustainable restaurants (meets community center) in New York. The Habana Outpost makes me proud to live in Brooklyn. I don't know if I can wait until April 16th when the season starts again.