By Zack Adams, RP Staff, on Mon Aug 20, 2012 at 3:00 PM ET
The Politics of Pigskin
There was some hooplah recently regarding the leaked college transcript of Julius Peppers. Watch out UNC. [Sporting News]
After losing 50 lbs. to get into shape DT Shaun Rogers is out for the season with a blood clot. [ESPN]
The Titans have named sophomore QB Jake Locker as their starter. Locker beat out the veteran Matt Hasselbeck who looked rejuvenated last year when he has several good games. [PFT]
If you haven’t seen any of SI’s training camp postcards just follow the link. [SI]
The Onion always nails it. This time they target T.O. as he decides which Seahawks QB he should undermine. [The Onion]
Check out this goofy hand-off from Cam Newton. [.gif]
Here’s the picture to the left in .gif form. [.gif]
Lisa Miller…yes, Mrs. RP herself…has launched a new health and wellness Web site for women called LisaMillerBeautifulDay.com.
Her mission?
As a Women’s Mind/Body Health Specialist, I’ve learned that several ingredients contribute to a dazzling recipe for optimum health, happiness, and balance. Each of us feel nourished by a different combination of those ingredients in the form of practices, or lifestyle habits, that nourish our bodies, spiritual core, our emotions and intellect. This custom-tailored medley is the unique prescription for vitality and wellness, for each of us.
It’s this multi-faceted approach to health and happiness that serves as the foundation for all of the women’s workshops and retreats I lead. They are designed to be explorative and educational, lighthearted, deeply relaxing, soulful gatherings for women that deepen intuitive abilities and foster personal transformation. And I have found that the support and laughter from these women’s circles is profoundly healing in itself!
And don’t miss learning about her Women’s Circle Retreat in Costa Rica, from February 17-23, 2013. An incredible experience for our female readers, and a perfect gift from husbands in the RP Nation!
By John Y. Brown III, on Mon Aug 20, 2012 at 12:00 PM ET
Parenting can feel like a basketball game.
My 18 year old son leaves home this Tuesday for Centre College. I am as proud as can be…but also very sad.
The first 13 years of parenting come naturally and the rules and roles are easily understood. It’s easy for us to feel good about the job we are doing. The next 5 years, however, are a “different kettle of fish,” as they say–a muddled and awkward affair. And we are running out of parenting energy as the relationship changes from parent -child to adult–adult.
I can’t help feeling like I have been in a basketball game that was tied at half-time –where I held my own as a parent—but by the end of the third quarter became a blowout for the opposing team. And for the fourth quarter our job is just to finish the game without the other team running up the score.
And yet, in some bizarre twist of logic, I am wanting this game to go into overtime even though I know my son is dribbling out the final seconds of the clock and I am not trying to steal or foul since it won’t matter.
And when the clock runs out he won’t throw the ball triumphantly into the stands but rather, like a gentleman, let the ball dribble itself for a few seconds before rolling away as he walks off the court.
And I will stay standing on the court looking up at the scoreboard and trying not to cry.
By Bradford Queen, Managing Editor, on Mon Aug 20, 2012 at 10:00 AM ET
The Politics of Media
While networks plan to keep hours they devote to the GOP and Dem conventions in primetime slim, networks will continue to offer gavel-to-gavel coverage – but online. [WSJ]
The selection process for moderators of presidential debates is nearly as secretive as a papal conclave. Here’s a look at the politics behind the choosing of this cycle’s moderators. [NYT]
Local TV news and ’60 Minutes’ received the top ratings in a new credibility poll by Pew Research. Fox News and USA Today ranked lowest in believability. [Pew Research]
The White House has granted Michael Lewis, author of “Moneyball,” almost exclusive access to the President for the coming days. Lewis will pen an article for the October issue of Vanity Fair. Neither the White House nor the magazine will comment on the topic of the article. [NYT]
C-SPAN’s political editor, Steve Scully, previewed the cable channel’s convention coverage plans:
Some at NBC’s ‘Tonight Show’ are getting pink slips. Jay Leno himself is taking a pay cut to “save jobs.” [Deadline]
Our prolific contributing RP, former Congressman Artur Davis, who recently switched from a Democrat to a Republican, was announced last week as a featured speaker at the upcoming Republican National Convention. Here is David Fahrentold’s profile from The Washington Post:
This is Artur Davis’s job now, the work that he hopes will resurrect his political career. Wear a suit. Speak to strangers. Explain that what had been some of the most important causes of his life — a political party and a president — turned out to be mistakes.
“How many of us believed, four years ago, that Barack Obama was not just a politician?” Davis, a former four-term congressman, asked Mitt Romney supporters in Arlington County’s Ballston neighborhood on Wednesday. The Romney people said nothing, but Davis kept on: This was his story, not theirs.
“We may not have the power to stop it,” Davis said of President Obama’s campaign. “But the American people have the power to punish it.”
Four years ago, Davis was onstage at the Democratic convention: a fast-rising congressman from Alabama, so close to Obama that he provided the official “second” for Obama’s nomination.
On Thursday, the Republican Party said he would be a “headliner” at its convention in Tampa, where he will be one of Obama’s most prominent African American critics.
By Bradford Queen, Managing Editor, on Fri Aug 17, 2012 at 10:00 AM ET
The Politics of The Screen
On the TV ‘screen’, the head of PBS is “extremely disappointed” by Mitt Romney’s suggestion that the federal government would slash federal funding for the programming service under his administration. [WaPo]
Warner Brothers has shuttered Warner Premier — it’s direct-to-video publishing arm — citing shifting business models and priorities. [THR]
Dale Olson, one of Hollywood’s most iconic publicists, died this week. He represented the likes of Rock Hudson, Shirley MacLaine, Steven Speilberg, Gene Kelly, and Joan Crawford. [NYTimes]
Movie etiquette changing? Some theaters are now welcoming heckling and cell phones and more. [Chicago Daily Herald]
Actor-turned Governor-turned actor again Arnold Schwarzenegger makes his first appearance in a film since leaving office in ‘The Expendables 2’, opening this weekend. [NYPost]
For the most part, Bill Clinton’s reconstruction of the Democratic Party is a masterpiece that did not survive the consummate political artist’s time in power: balanced budgets seem like a relic of a bygone era; the pro-growth, business friendly wing of the Democratic Party has given way to Elizabeth Warren style populism; and modulated stances on social issues have been replaced with legal fights against Catholic hospitals, rhetorical battle cries about a “War on Women”, and a place in the party’s platform for a fifty state right of same sex marriage.
The exception, the one preserved centrist jewel from that era, had been (until last week) the 1996 reform of welfare. As a policy instrument, the conversion of welfare from an entitlement to an earned benefit conditioned on work, job training, or secondary level education like a GDE program rested on decades of data about the perils of dependency in poor communities. As a political instrument, coupling public assistance with a work requirement achieved a stunning result: a benefit program that had been deeply controversial, and racially polarizing, was re-crafted as a bipartisan amalgam of left-leaning altruism and right-leaning notions of personal responsibility.
As a result, one of the most contentious ideological disputes between seventies and eighties era conservatives and liberals all but disappeared as a flashpoint. It has been Social Security and Medicare–not welfare–that movement conservatives have sought to redesign in the past eight years, and the most provocative expenditure of public dollars in the last four years has been the transfer of nearly a trillion dollars to the banking and automobile industries rather than any form of public assistance.
Read the rest of… Artur Davis: Setting Welfare Back on Fire
By John Y. Brown III, on Thu Aug 16, 2012 at 12:00 PM ET
Pet peeve from NY visit.
I got irked a couple times listening to seemingly self-deprecating New Yorkers talk about how they were so self-absorbed or narcissistic—as was their spouse.
What bothered me wasn’t that fact but the way they seemed to be saying that sort of “sophisticated” problem happens only to busy city folk. And explains all the syllables and hard to spell word like narcissistic.
I wanted to say, “Ever heard the saying ‘That couple is like two tics and no dog?'”
Pause and then add “Back home we can out self-center and out-crazy you all any day of the week.” And smile smugly in a pleasant but slightly deranged manner.
But I held my tongue. It just didn’t seem as impressive a bragging point as it initially sounded in my head.
By Zack Adams, RP Staff, on Thu Aug 16, 2012 at 10:00 AM ET
The Politics of Tech
Wikileaks reveals US government spy network “TrapWire” and is subsequently smacked down by DDOS attacks. [io9]
How many times have you read all the way through a Terms of Service agreement before click “I accept” on the Internet? Probably very few. There is a new project on the way that would change things. [TechCrunch]
“Samsung: Whether or not we ripped off Apple’s tech, Apple stole it to begin with” — Provides video evidence of a tablet built by Mitsubishi to show that Apple’s patent on pinch-to-zoom technology should not be valid because it already existed for years before the first iPhone launched. [BGR]
German government officials are claiming that Facebook is maintaining a database of facial recognition and are demanding they erase it. [ars technica]
Scientists have invented particles that will keep you alive even if you can’t breathe. [Gizmodo]
