Last night, The RP took on his semi-regular gig as a national political commentator on Wall Street Journal Radio’s The Daily Wrap with Michael Castner.
The RP and Castner celebrated all of the “No Labels” talk this week: Republicans breaking the Grover Norquist “no tax” pledge, both sides talking compromise on the fiscal cliff, references to the Reagan/O’Neill iconic partnership. And they discussed how all Americans should sign on to No Labels’ efforts to continue pressure on Washington policymakers to continue the problem-solving momentum.
By Nancy Slotnick, on Tue Nov 27, 2012 at 8:30 AM ET
“You never don’t know” is what my mother-in-law says when she means “You never know.” It must be said in a Polish accent with the conviction that only a Holocaust survivor could pull off while using a double negative. So by the theory of transitivity, “You never don’t know” equals “You always know.” I’m going with that theory. You always know.
If you can tap into your instincts, and distinguish them from anxiety, you always know. “Is he the One?” You know. “Should I have that opening line?” You know. “Should I write that email to reach out?” You know, but you don’t always listen to your gut. You talk yourself out of it.
Do you expect greatness to come your way or mediocrity? Or disaster? Murphy’s Law is more about Murphy than about a law of nature. I think Murphy attracted bad luck because he’s always expecting bad luck and it feeds on itself. Of course if you want to attract good luck you have to do the work. There’s plenty of good luck out there and it will come your way sooner or later. You just have to be prepared to seize your luck.
Here’s how: Let’s say you’re on a train traveling for the holidays, like I am right now. Let’s say you’re single and you secretly wish that the man of your dreams would sit next to you. You do hold out the hope for good luck. But you also dread the fat lady who talks your ear off or the crying baby that blocks the audio of Gossip Girl Season 2. Even though you’ve already seen it. You are tempted to just put your backpack up on the seat next to you, put on your headphones and go into “Do Not Disturb” mode. If you’re lucky, then the train is not sold out and you will get two seats to yourself. But is that what you really want?
Read the rest of… Nancy Slotnick: You Never Don’t Know
By Jonathan Miller, on Fri Nov 23, 2012 at 10:00 AM ET
Now that the election’s over, my satellite radio’s tuning system is stuck permanently on ESPN.
Between the “male performance” ads and the dating services promoted, there’s been an ad running regularly urging listeners to check out a Web site that exposes President Obama’s “secret plan to retain power through 2020.”
I clicked on it, but got too bored after a few minutes of Obama-bashing and investment self-promotion.
So if any of the RP Nation wants to persevere and report back, our Web page will be open.
By Jonathan Miller, on Thu Nov 22, 2012 at 10:00 AM ET
Today’s Thanksgiving celebration is especially meaningful to Seinfeld fan-boys like me.
For today also marks the 20th anniversary of the most brilliantly funny 22 minutes television has ever seen — the uber-classic episode entitled “The Contest.”
“The Contest” is about…well Seinfeld never uses the word either. So if you are too young to remember, or too sheltered to have seen it, or you can’t wait to laugh again, enjoy the first few minutes of comedic history:
As an American liberal who loves Israel because I’m a liberal, I’ve been disturbed by the recent diminishing trend of American progressive support for the Jewish State in its decades-long conflict with its increasingly hostile neighbors.
A recent CNN/ORC poll concerning the Gaza conflict intensified my anxiety: While a plurality of self-identified liberals and Democrats support Israel’s right of self-defense in taking military action against Hamas, Democrats were three times more likely than Republicans to believe that the Jewish State is “not justified” in its targeted bombing campaign.
The roots of liberal sympathy for the radical, fundamentalist, brutal Hamas regime are as complex as they are troubling. We liberals love the underdog, and a media that rewards conflict over context has helped promote the perverse notion that the tiny nation with the Star of David on its flag is really the Goliath in the popular Biblical metaphor. This problem was exacerbated in Campaign 2012 when my fellow progressives watched a coterie of unlikeable, right-wing GOP presidential hopefuls proclaim their uber-passionate support for the Jewish State and try to use it as a political wedge against our beloved progressive President.
But amidst the shouting and finger-pointing, the fundamental reason behind the decline of American progressive support for Israel relates to a profound misunderstanding of the facts on the ground. When confronted with an accurate accounting of the differences between the two sides in the conflict, a true liberal must be compelled to embrace the Zionist cause.
Here are but a few examples:
Israel Values Human Life; Hamas Does Not
There’s no moral value more important to American liberals than the preciousness of human life, particularly the lives of those in our society who are most vulnerable: As Hubert Humphrey elegantly framed the liberal credo, “The moral test of government is how it treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the aged; and those who are in the shadows of life — the sick, the needy and the handicapped.”
Israel’s current intervention in Gaza is a living example of this principle. Understanding that any military action would provoke its international enemies, Israel simply could no longer tolerate the danger posed to its citizens — Jews and Arabs — by the many months of unprovoked bombing of civilian targets in Southern Israel by Hamas militants. Accordingly, Israel has engaged in a painstakingly-measured, precisely-targeted bombing campaign, using the most modern technology to carefully dismantle military targets and avoid civilian casualties. On Monday, for example, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) used pinpoint accuracy to destroy the second floor of a Gaza City office building, killing only the Islamic Jihad military leaders who had been responsible for training terrorists, planning attacks on Israeli civilians and manufacturing weapons.
The Seattle Times was watching The RP on The Daily Show last week. Indeed, they mention the appearance as an illustration of the problem of hyper-partisanship and polarization in our system:
Some will glance at the list and liken No Labels’ mission to a bunch of kumbaya ho-hum, but something’s gotta give. If the two main parties in this country can’t work together, we need an independent force to shake things up. I’m not saying we should do away with the Democrats and the Republicans; I’m saying citizens should encourage them to use No Labels as a basis for building consensus and compromise.
On last Thursday’s The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, correspondent Al Madrigal “reported” on gridlock in America and interviewed a No Labels co-founder about the group’s 12-point plan. The fake newsman challenged the virtues of those ideas by taking us to “a magical land of no gridlock.” He goes to Arizona, where Republicans have a super majority in both chambers of the Legislature and have passed a series of controversial bills.
Watch. It’s really silly, but the underlying message is serious.
In Madrigal’s faux news world, we’re presented with two extremes: gridlock — government inaction that’s symptomatic of parties seeking to tip the balance of power — or one-party domination.
We’re better-served by having something in the middle.
Since the make-up of the U.S. Congress is relatively balanced between Republicans and Democrats right now, I can’t think of a better time for lawmakers to set aside party labels and take tentative steps to re-gain the public’s trust.
By Jonathan Miller, on Mon Nov 19, 2012 at 9:15 AM ET
My good friend, Thomas Perez — formerly the Montgomery County (MD) Council President, and currently the Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division of the United States Department of Justice — has a great idea on how to help solve the continuing problem of our ineffective national voter registration system.
Writes Pete Yost of the Associated Press:
One of the top enforcers of the nation’s civil rights laws said Friday government should be responsible for automatically registering citizens to vote by using existing databases to compile lists of all eligible residents in each jurisdiction.
The proposal by Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez, chief of the Justice Department’s civil rights division, follows an election with breakdowns that forced voters in many states to wait in line for hours.
In remarks at George Washington University law school, Perez said census data shows that of 75 million adult citizens who failed to vote in the 2008 presidential election, 60 million were not registered and therefore ineligible to cast a ballot.
Perez says one of the biggest barriers to voting in this country is an antiquated registration system.
President Barack Obama has said the problem must be dealt with and “we in the Justice Department … have already begun discussing ways to address long lines and other election administration problems, whether through proposed legislation, executive action and other policy measures,” Perez said in prepared remarks. He welcomed his audience to contribute suggestions.
“For too many people in our democracy, the act of voting has become an endurance contest,” said Perez. “I used to run marathons; you should not feel like you have endured a marathon when you vote.”
Perez said the current registration system is needlessly complex and forces state and local officials to manually process a crush of new registrations, most handwritten, every election season. This leaves “the system riddled with errors, too often, creating chaos at the polls,” Perez said. “That’s exactly what we saw at a number of polling places on Election Day last week.”
“Fortunately, modern technology provides a straightforward fix for these problems – if we have the political will to bring our election systems into the 21st century,” Perez said. “It should be the government’s responsibility to automatically register citizens to vote, by compiling – from databases that already exist – a list of all eligible residents in each jurisdiction. Of course, these lists would be used solely to administer elections – and would protect essential privacy rights.” He did not say which level of government should be responsible for implementing such changes.
Perez said the nation also must address the problem that 1 in 9 Americans moves every year, but voter registration often does not move with people who move.
Election officials should work together to establish a program of “permanent, portable registration so that voters who move can vote at their new polling place on Election Day,” Perez said. In the meantime, he said states should implement fail-safe procedures to correct voter-roll errors and omissions by allowing every voter to cast a regular, nonprovisional ballot on Election Day.
Perez supported allowing voters to register and cast their ballots on the same day. He called same-day registration “a reform we should be considering seriously” because it would promote voter participation.
He said that in the 2008 presidential election, five of the six states with the highest turnout in the country were states with same-day registration. Preliminary turnout estimates for the 2012 election, he said, show that this pattern will likely continue.
Is it worth daring to be great? No buzzwords, no ambiguity, just a simple question that couldn’t matter more. Business model innovation starts by realizing you are contributing to a movement that is bigger than you. It’s global, self-organizing, and transformative. Lead by letting go. The first and most important step in the business model innovation process requires a change in perspective for both you and your organization. Looking through the lens of your current business model will most likely result in incremental changes at best. Business model innovation requires a different perspective. It requires a different set of lenses to examine new opportunities. It starts by realizing transformational opportunities are bigger than you and your organization. Business model innovation must be treated like an epoch journey with all the wide-eyed enthusiasm of a young child exploring new territory for the first time.
Saul Kaplan
Business model innovation must be a strategic objective or it won’t happen. One of my biggest pet peeves is setting strategy one tactic at a time. It drives me crazy to be surrounded by people and organizations that think if they just work hard enough and do more things that a strategic direction and destination will emerge. It seems that most of the world works this way. It is terribly inefficient. How many people and organizations do you know that pedal the bicycle like crazy but never seem to arrive anywhere. They just keep pedaling harder hoping that something will eventually stick. It is exhausting watching them. Why not establish business model innovation as a strategic objective, a specific destination, and work hard on those things that help you get there. It seems so simple. Setting a strategic direction provides a way to know which tactics are aligned and contribute to reaching the destination. The destination may change along the way requiring different tactics, and that is OK, but not having a destination at all is a ticket to nowhere.
When John F. Kennedy said, “We choose to go to the moon” in 1961, Americans rallied around the destination. We believed it was possible and the goal of setting foot on the moon rallied a country to advance its global science and technology leadership. It was cool to study math and science and clear that innovation was the economic engine that would drive American prosperity. When Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon eight years later and said, “That’s one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind”, we celebrated his achievement as if it was our own and knew at that moment that anything was possible. We have been trying to get that feeling back ever since. Today, we have no clear destination, in space or on earth.
Read the rest of… Saul Kaplan: The Hardest Question Any Leader Can Ask
Last night, The RP took on his semi-regular gig as a national political commentator on Wall Street Journal Radio’s The Daily Wrap with Michael Castner.
