By Lauren Mayer, on Tue Oct 1, 2013 at 3:00 PM ET I’ve always prided myself on both keeping an open mind and having strong opinions – sure, it’s a tough balance, but as a former high school debater I still remember the skills we developed having to argue on both sides of any issue. And while I believe I’m in the right about most things, I have always tried to consider the opposite point of view.
Until now . . . the GOP antics about the debt ceiling and government funding have left me unable to comprehend how they can simultaneously argue that it’s already destroyed the economy and killed people while also insisting we have to stop it now before people get addicted to it. And don’t get me started on the congresspeople who have compared it to Naziism, the Fugitive Slave Act or a mass outbreak of cellulite in Hollywood. (Yes, I made up that last one but it makes just as much sense as the others!)
When I contemplated writing a song about the latest from the GOP, I started to worry that I might offend people. And yes, some of my best friends actually ARE Republicans. Of course, I’m in the San Francisco area, so Republicans here tend to be pretty moderate, particularly about social issues like marriage equality, medical marijuana, and reproductive choice. (One of my favorite New Yorker cartoons shows a woman telling her friend about her last date: “He says he’s a fiscal conservative and a social liberal – that means he’s cheap and he sleeps around!” – but I do believe my friends who describe themself the same way . . . )
However, when the subject of politics came up, a friend of mine said, “I’m a registered Republican, and I’m thoroughly disgusted with my party these days!,” and I don’t think she’s alone. So if you look at it that way, making fun of the GOP actually IS bi-partisan . . . .
“The GOP Says No!”
By Artur Davis, on Tue Oct 1, 2013 at 1:30 PM ET Given that not a single Democratic voice has surfaced in favor of bending on the House GOP’s demand of a moratorium on the health care law, and since it is unlikely that the House would accept the one remotely plausible counter-offer of a one year delay of the individual mandate, the government shutdown is about to commence.
Whether that eventuality proves to be a blunder that thwarts the recovery and casts Republicans as intransigent extremists is a gamble I would rather Republicans not run. I’m in the camp that fears that shutdown politics will be costly for the party, from Virginia’s November races to the Senate fight in 2014. But even when the crisis eventually resolves, likely through some Senate procedural device that bypasses or outwits the House, the more meaningful dilemma is that the right’s path to brinksmanship has not really been countered by any articulate, influential conservative voice.
The case against the Ted Cruz putsch has been advanced in Republican circles, to be sure, but largely in the context of either the Wall Street fallout or disdain for Cruz’s leveraging of the defund Obamacare strategy to elevate his presidential ambitions. Missing is an alternative, conservative anchored vision of what the political right might more constructively be doing to advance its agenda.
 What would such a message sound like? It might, for example, point out that Republicans are sacrificing one of the most principled critiques of the Democratic maneuvers on Obamacare: that the process of passing the law circumvented congressional rules and fed the public’s cynicism about congressional responsiveness to public sentiment. The defund movement’s tactics—risking a government stoppage that every poll suggests is deeply unpopular and seeking to effect a dramatic policy shift without anything resembling the normal process for repealing legislation—resembles too closely the Democrats’ insistence on driving through a healthcare overhaul in the face of broad opposition, through a parliamentary slight-of hand that effectively imposed one congressional chamber’s prerogatives on the other.
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Artur Davis: Where Is the Right’s Answer to Ted Cruz?
By John Y. Brown III, on Tue Oct 1, 2013 at 12:00 PM ET  Our 9th consecutive annual father-son weekend in the mountains of North Carolina.
Before that our annual father-son weekend was in the hills of Northern Alabama.
A baby grows into a child, you son.
The child grows into a boy, your son.
The boy grows into a young man, your son.
The young man grows into your best friend.
My son.
By Nancy Slotnick, on Tue Oct 1, 2013 at 8:30 AM ET The new buzz word in the world of tech entrepreneurs is cherry-picking. It’s used as a verb, as in “You can cherry-pick your customers based on targeted demographics.” These MBA types like to have shared lingo because it makes them sound smart. I like to learn it so that I can pretend to fit in. I never really do fit in, but it got me thinking about cherry-picking and where that expression came from.
I believe that life is a bowl of cherries. Lately I have been affirming that belief on a daily basis with the intention of creatively visualizing a brave new 2013 for me. So far it’s working. But often when I get all excited about a goal or a new year’s resolution it goes through the following cycle: Hope, Action, Reinforcement, Bold Action, Rejection, Defeat. Repeat.
I’m trying to break that cycle with my “no fear” new year’s resolution. I suspect that cherry-picking may be part of the problem. If life is a bowl of cherries, and that is the symbol of beauty in the world, then it must hold true that
 Cherry-picking = Nitpicking.
Aha, there’s the rub. I picture some lesser version of myself going to Whole Foods and literally picking out cherries one by one to get the best. But they are all cherries at Whole Foods! Granted the cherries at this store could be dubbed Whole Paycheck but they’re going to be delicious and it can’t possibly be worth my time to pick them out one by one.
I tell myself- “Just buy the bag. Enjoy the cherries. Don’t be nitpicky.” It’s not even as unpredictable as Forrest Gump said about the chocolates. You doknow what you’re going to get- a cherry! If it’s no good then you spit it out along with the pit and you move on. (Do those of you out there who are dating see where I am going with this?) You still have a bowl of cherries.
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Nancy Slotnick: Bowl of Cherries
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