By RP Staff, on Mon Sep 12, 2011 at 8:30 AM ET More than five months into this grand Web experiment, we continue to tinker with the site to address your suggestions and interests.
Beginning today, we will start a new feature: “Breaking News” Every day, when the moment suggests, we will provide some news and links to critical news, politics and culture information. We’re hoping to make The Recovering Politician a one-stop shop for all of your information needs.
Initially, we continue to expand our roster of subjects. Stay tuned for weekly updates on “The Politics of Food,” “The Politics of the States,” and “The Politics of College.”
And as always, we want to hear from you. What are we doing wrong? What can we do better? What are we missing?
Just send us your emails to staff@TheRecovering Politician.com or comment below.
Thanks for your readership, and enjoy!
By Jonathan Miller, on Sat Sep 10, 2011 at 2:55 PM ET  Two Jews walk into a castle in Rome…
OK, I forget the punchline.
Anyway, I need your help.
I’m in Rome for a few days (for the first time), and I need some advice. I’m ready to hit the usual suspects: the Sistine Chapel, the Colosseum, Caesar’s Palace, yaddio, yaddio, yaddio.
But I need some advice about hidden treasures, special restaurants, shops to purchase Roman candles, you name it.
I also could use a little basic Italian for dummies.
The only phrases I know are “Grazie”; “Arriva Derci”; “Stoo Gatz”; “Gabagool”; “Goomba” and “Badda Bing.” (Thanks, Tony and Carmela!)
So show a paizano some amore and leave your comments below. And I hope you are having a great weekend.
By Grant Smith, RP Staff, on Fri Sep 9, 2011 at 3:00 PM ET
Mad Money’s Jim Cramer says President Obama “doesn’t understand capital formation.” [The Street]
Is SAAB going the way of the Studebaker? [Fortune]
Companies that are hiring despite the current economy. [Forbes]
The Federal Reserve can still help, if necessary says Bernanke. [CNBC]
Monica Lewinsky: how her life has been going since…well, you know. [The Daily Mail]
By Chris Schulz, RP Staff, on Fri Sep 9, 2011 at 1:30 PM ET
Amidst hurricane season a wildfire is ravaging Central Texas.[yahoo.com]
Obama must make a difficult decision about the future of US energy. Opening more land to drilling will create jobs and energy but will anger environmentalists. [cnn.com]
Soon the controversial ‘shark fin soup’ may be banned in California over concerns of dwindling numbers of sharks. [latimes.com]
A South African plant evolved a perch, in order for birds to aid in its fertilization. [bbc.com]
By Artur Davis, on Fri Sep 9, 2011 at 12:00 PM ET  There is no spot left for Sarah Palin in the starting lineup. The evangelical woman with a grassroots appeal to the party’s base? The unvarnished conservative who thrives on the liberal establishment’s disdain? Both roles are firmly taken.
What should gall Palin is that it did not have to be this way. Neither Michele Bachmann nor Rick Perry were remotely plausible national figures a year ago, and they exist today because of ground that Palin was too unfocused to occupy.
 Palin doesn’t add up: she is a gifted stump speaker who still kept repeating her convention speech in 08 for months to crowds who had heard all the lines before; she frets about the establishment’s failure to take her governing skills seriously, but abandons a governorship that would have allowed her to burnish her credentials as a substantive reformer. She wonders why her toughness is questioned, then confesses that she left the governorship because she was worn down by ethics complaints from a gadfly.
Sarah Palin has formidable campaign talents, but none of the will to use those assets to gain power. That makes her reassuringly normal as a person, but it will never carry her anywhere near the presidency.
(Cross-posted, with permission of the author, from Politico’s Arena)
By Stephanie Doctrow, RP Staff, on Fri Sep 9, 2011 at 12:00 PM ET Talking to your children about 9/11 is never easy. Here’s some tips to make the conversation a little easier. [Time]
Read about one woman’s quest to avoid mirrors… for an entire year. [Mirror Mirror Off The Wall]
In a weak economy, one sector of food production is actually booming: local vegetable gardens. [NY Times]
New research shows that fewer Americans are smoking, and those who do actually smoke less. [Wall Street Journal]
By Zac Byer, on Fri Sep 9, 2011 at 8:30 AM ET Can we define a generation? If so, how should we? Personally, I tend to be skeptical of labels. We see it all the time in politics, when a candidate campaigns under one banner, but goes to sleep under the cover of another. We place so much trust in the label that it colors our perception of the fuller picture and prevents us from accepting future developments in character or content.
 Remembering 9/11 While we still need to answer those first two questions, the related question on my mind is this: Are we the 9/11 Generation?
To help me reach an answer, I asked my grandfathers to help me consider the question from a different historical perspective. On December 7, 1941, my father’s father was eight years old. He remembers hearing about the attacks on Pearl Harbor. He remembers seeing the headlines in the extra edition newspaper. In the weeks and months that followed, he saw Atlantic City hotels turn into barracks, and watched his father return home from his dentist’s office to help as an Air Raid Warden in Trenton, New Jersey. But he does not carry with him lasting images of the USS Arizona in flames.
 70 years ago... On December 7, 1941, my mother’s father was ten years old. He remembers when news from Hawaii first came over the radio. He also remembers the newspaper articles. He recalls having no idea where Hawaii was, let alone Pearl Harbor. So, he went next door where one of the local teachers outside Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania pulled out a map and pointed out the islands 2,500 miles off the coast of California. But images of the actual attack escape him, too.
In some ways, my experience on September 11, 2001 parallels my grandfathers’ experiences nearly sixty years prior. I lived outside Los Angeles, nearly 3,000 miles away from the four hijackings. I was only thirteen years old, had never heard of Al Qaeda, and could not find Afghanistan on any map. Yet, the images of the falling Towers, burning Pentagon, and smoldering Shanksville field remain seared in my memory. And they will remain with me forever.
I think it is that difference – that real-time connection to the day’s tragic events – that moistened the adhesive on the “9/11 Generation” label. We take for granted the technological advances in information communication, but our grandfathers did not have those luxuries seventy years ago. And because we have been so diligent in our remembrance, so reflective in our recollection, today’s twenty-somethings have accepted that label and stuck it right on our chests.
But, why define ourselves by tragedy? Why let nineteen terrorists dictate the label of our generation?
Read the rest of…
Zac Byer: Are we the 9/11 Generation?
By Zack Adams, RP Staff, on Thu Sep 8, 2011 at 3:00 PM ET
“Killing the Nissan Leaf’s battery” – How to do it and what happens when you do. [Cars.com]
Do you like driving? I thought so. Well, good news for you: Pres. Obama’s to-be-unveiled spending bill will focus heavily on infrastructure and rebuilding roads and bridges. [Bloomberg]
General Motors is making money, but they aren’t sharing it just yet. [Detroit Free Press]
Top Gear’s guide to doing donuts. [Top Gear]
Saab may not be dead yet at a Chinese firm is looking to invest around $352 million. [Detroit News]
By Zack Adams, RP Staff, on Thu Sep 8, 2011 at 3:00 PM ET
Google Correlate – search by drawing a correlation. How fantastic! [Google]
This past week the U.S. filed an antitrust lawsuit to prevent AT&T’s $39 billion acquisition of T-Mobile. That merger would combine the 2nd- and 4th-largest mobile carriers in the country. [Bloomberg]
“Web-blocking and Illegal Sites” – Do minutes obtained from a secret meeting reveal plans to implement measures to block parts of the Internet? Check it out. [Pirate Party UK]
The hacker group Anonymous hasn’t shown up in the news for a while. Probably because the group’s leader was arrested. However, they came back with vengeance last week with big leak of Texas Police e-mails and documents. There are a few examples in the link. [Gizmodo]
You will probably recall the Raspberry Pi that I have written about before. It’s that amazing $25 PC that fits on a USB stick. Well here is a video of it running Quake III! [Geek]
By Grant Smith, RP Staff, on Thu Sep 8, 2011 at 1:30 PM ET
Should Uncle Omar be deported? Senator Scott Brown of Massachusetts believes so. [The Hill]
The latest poll numbers on President Obama. [Politico]
7 White House economic speeches from the past that flopped. [MSNBC]
The 9/11 Decade: How Washington D.C. has changed since that fateful day. [New York Times]
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