By John Y. Brown III, on Thu Apr 19, 2012 at 12:00 PM ET  When we are afraid, we should ask ourselves whether it is a fear of failing— or a fear of something very different.
Sometimes we get lovingly nudged—or abruptly pushed— past our fear of success.
We may not realize it at the time, but in retrospect, that’s what is happening.
A famous inspirational quote captures this well:
The leader said to his people….“Come to the edge…..”
The people responded…..“We can’t. We’re afraid.”
The leader said….“Come to the edge.”
But again the people said…..“We can’t. We will fall!”
…….“Come to the edge.”
….And they came.
And he pushed them…..
…..And they flew.
~Guillaume Apollinaire
By John Y. Brown III, on Thu Apr 19, 2012 at 10:30 AM ET Spy Parents
It’s not a movie. That’s Spy Kids. Spy parents is when a parent puts monitoring software on their child’s computer to monitor the websites visited.
I did this to my son when he was about 12 years old. As I looked over the first weeks batch of websites visited, I was pleased to see there were no “inappropriate” websites visited.
Just a lot of kid stuff with an unusually high number of political websites visited. However, upon closer examination, I noticed almost all the political websites were republican-leaning.
I didn’t know what to do.
Was my son a “Closet Republican?”
 Was this the kind of thing I should talk to my child about alone or shouldI involve a counselor?
Was 7 conservative-leaning websites visited (coupled with a Google search for Glenn Beck) in a two weeks period grounds for an intervention?
Should I explain that some of my closest friends are republican and that this is nothing to be ashamed of?
In fact, there were groups and fundraising activities for people who eventually make conservativism a “life choice” —even though many Democrats don’t believe it is really a “choice?”
Read the rest of…
John Y. Brown, III: Honoring My Son’s Choices
By RP Staff, on Thu Apr 19, 2012 at 10:00 AM ET  For three generations, John Y. Browns have been active Democratic politicians in Kentucky.
John Y. Brown Sr., my great-grandfather, was an avid supporter of FDR’s New Deal while serving a term in the US House of Representatives and was a champion of various liberal causes in Kentucky’s state House for several decades.
John Y. Brown Jr., my grandfather, served one term as a Democratic governor of the Commonwealth and was the national chairman for the Democratic Telethons of the early 1970s.
My father, John Y. Brown III, was a two term Democratic Secretary of State and delegate to the Democratic National Convention in 1996.
Being the fourth John Y. Brown, most people would expect that I would follow the tradition and become a Democrat. However, when I turn 18 later this month, I plan on registering with the Republican Party. It has been a decision that I have thought out fully and feel good about—even if it appears to break with a family political tradition.
 As my political philosophy developed over the years, it became clearer and clearer that I was drifting rightward. My father would tell me that he believed the temperament we’re born with influences our political philosophy—as much as our ideas and beliefs. My personal political journey has confirmed this in many ways. Every time I heard about an issue where there was major disagreement between the political parties, I found myself siding with the Republicans over the Democrats. Eventually, I stopped resisting this and embraced my inclination toward a conservative political philosophy.
Read the rest of…
John Y. Brown, IV: Why I’m Registering As a Republican
By Artur Davis, on Thu Apr 19, 2012 at 8:30 AM ET  When Barack Obama is not being re-cast as a principled defender of progressive values, his defenders in the press try another sleight-of-hand, defining him as a pragmatist desperately seeking responsible Republicans with whom to cut deals. Enter Paul Krugman’s latest column, “The Gullible Center”,which is a warmed over attack on Paul Ryan’s “extremism” (the ninth from the New York Times editorial pages in seven days, but who’s counting) and a mildly more original jab at moderates who allegedly lavish the undeserved label on seriousness on Ryan’s budget cutting, while missing the genuine article in President Obama.
A few observations about Krugman’s revisionism. First, I’m not exactly a Ryan devotee for a variety of reasons: marginal tax rate reductions are overstated in Ryan’s model as a tool of economic growth; at the same time, his plan leaves too little room for additional investments in worker retraining, infrastructure, and education (it is particularly worrisome that he would leave Washington with fewer resources to incentivize the wholesale reforms on education that have to be effected at the state level) and it slices out too many elements of the safety net without doing a rigorous accounting of what has and hasn’t worked. Budgeting, Ryan style, is much too vulnerable to the criticism that it is a theory of emasculated government and an ideological tool rather than a blueprint for expanded prosperity.
 But the notion that President Obama is the misunderstood centrist in the budget wars? It’s a fantasy; to paraphrase Krugman’s closing jab at moderates, a naked conceit that has not much substance. Obama’s current budget repeats his minimalist approach to entitlements from last year—a series of mini-measures on cost reduction for Medicare, no rethinking whatsoever of how to restore Social Security to a safety net rather than a substantial net windfall for its beneficiaries. While Ryan has at least traded future structural realignments in Medicare for a safe haven for current beneficiaries, Obama resists countering Ryan, by defending the status quo while outlining an alternative of what a sustainable future looks like. To the contrary, Obama’s budgetary approach to Medicare and for that matter Obamacare mimics conservatives when they load all manner of unrealistic growth assumptions on top of their tax cut proposals: Obama’s version of fanciful thinking is the cost-cutting from comparative efficiency techniques that may or not survive congressional review, and that may or may not be scalable.
Read the rest of…
Artur Davis: The “Obama is a Moderate” Fantasy
By Zack Adams, RP Staff, on Wed Apr 18, 2012 at 3:00 PM ET
Nope, nope, nope. [picture]
If you’re having a bad day… [Twitter]
What is Google maps trying to say? [picture]
Troll Dog. Amazing. [gif]
The Land Before Time. Don’t think too hard about it. [picture]
It’s about to get pretty crazy up in here. [picture]
By Zack Adams, RP Staff, on Wed Apr 18, 2012 at 12:00 PM ET
The 2012 NFL schedule has officially been released! Are you happy with your team’s draw? [NFL.com]
Here’s a cool story about RB prospect Trent Richardson taking an Alabama high school senior who survived cancer to her high school prom. [ESPN]
“Unruly fans must pass code-of-conduct exam to return to games” [PFT NBC]
Here are the best and worst games to keep an eye out for in the 2012 season. [Yahoo! Sports]
Sean Payton has been banned from all contact with the Saints organization and the NFL for the 2012 season. [CBS Sports]
By John Y. Brown III, on Wed Apr 18, 2012 at 12:00 PM ET
10 hard facts about late night infomercials (Brace yourself):
1) No book, program or technology will “transform your life” in 14 days. Or even 30 days.
2) Operators are always “standing by” –even if they act like it’s only for a few more minutes.
3) Remember, you don’t really want to be like Anthony
Robbins. Just look like him. But he’s not telling you how to do that.
4) Ronco knives work well but you never use them as much as you think you will.
5) If you are over 40 what it takes to get “Six pack abs” isn’t worth all the effort required.
6) The 1-900 Psychic lines where a stranger predicts your future, is a pretty good deal. They are right about 50% of the time with predictions that you will have something good or bad happen in the near future.
7) It’s hard to “re-gift” products purchased through Infomercials because people know that’s where they came from.
8) There’s nothing you need at 2:30am that you couldn’t get by without at 1am. You are just tireder and more vulnerable to persuasion.
9) I have never heard any male brag that they grew a new head of hair after purchasing a late night infomercial spray.
10) Nothing changes until you are ready and willing to change.
By Krystal Ball, on Wed Apr 18, 2012 at 8:30 AM ET  There is a caterpillar native to the Americas from the Silkworm moth genus Lonomia.
The caterpillar doesn’t look dangerous, but if you attempt to harm it, it secretes a venomous anticoagulant that causes renal failure, hemorrhaging, and death. Perhaps this is what Reince Priebus meant by the GOP “War on Women” being like a “War on Caterpillars.”
Although any given incremental erosion of women’s reproductive rights from a GOP sponsored bill at the state level seems harmless enough to the future of the GOP, taken in the aggregate they are likely to cause the party severe electoral distress.
Caterpillars aside, the GOP “War on Women” is real and it has real-world consequences for the millions of women whose lives can and will be impacted by legislation that erodes more than a century’s worth of progress on women’s reproductive rights.
 There were over 1100 antichoice provisions introduced in 2011 and 900 antichoice provisions introduced so far in 2012. Legislators in 13 states have introduced 22 bills seeking to mandate that a woman obtain an ultrasound procedure before having an abortion.
Of these, seven states are pursuing the state-rape vaginal probe variety. In addition, legislators in 13 states have sponsored right-wing “Personhood” type bills, too extreme even for the electorate of Mississippi, that could make both abortion and reproductive choices highly restricted.
Lest we think that the rhetoric around these bills might contain the damage to the GOP’s standing amongst women, please note how Georgia state legislator Rep. Terry England compares women to cows and pigs on his farm in support of bill forcing women to carry even inviable fetuses to term and Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett justifies forced ultrasound bill by telling women to “just close your eyes.”
Read the rest of…
Krystal Ball: The GOP War on Women is Real
By John Y. Brown III, on Tue Apr 17, 2012 at 12:00 PM ET Impenetrable Packaging: There’s got to be a better way.
A few years back the “He Man” serving was all the marketing rage. Restaurants would offer up 20% more food than people could eat and charge 40% more and get away with it because of the “perceived value.”
Today the problem is with packages that cannot be opened by mere mortals. If you are a bodybuilder or keep a chain saw in your car, no need to keep reading. This doesn’t apply to you.
For the rest of us, though, I don’t get this need of putting items we purchase in packages we can’t open.
Is it to create a “perceived value add” bc we have to work so hard to open our new product that we are supposed to feel even more excited than we would have been to start using it?
It can’t be to prevent store theft. If so, only easily lifted store items would be encased in a impenetrable packaging –not everything in retail stores.
Yesterday, after wrestling for nearly 10 minutes with an ear bud package, I finally successfully tore it open. I looked around to see if others were watching. I felt like Arthur successfully withdrawing the embedded Excalibur sword from the giant stone.
I felt I should be knighted or at least applauded.
And I didn’t feel a “value add.”
I did feel several abrasions on my hands and fingers. Which I hope I’m not being charged extra for. And I didn’t bother trying to buy band-aids. That would be another battle to open that package.
By Kristen Hamilton, RP Staff, on Tue Apr 17, 2012 at 10:00 AM ET
Coachella is here! I present to you your go-to fashion guide:[SheFinds]
Fashion and beauty membership sites are taking over. Which site reigns supreme? [SheFinds]
Reunited and it feels so good: Jean Paul Gaultier set to design for Madonna’s upcoming world tour! [Grazia]
A cool guide to painting cutesy designs on your nails without them looking like your 5-year-old sister painted them. [Racked]
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