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Chris Matthews Plugs “The Recovering Politician’s Twelve Step Program to Survive Crisis” on Hardball Click here to purchase this week only for 99 cents
On tonight’s MSNBC “Hardball,” host Chris Matthews plugged The Recovering Politician’s Twelve Step Program to Survive Crisis after a discussion with former RNC Chair Michael Steele, a co-author of the book. Take a look here: Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Welcome to Episode One of The Recovering Politician’s CRISIS TV, a weekly roundtable discussion of the highest profile national scandals, with expert analysis from those who’ve served in the arena and suffered through crises themselves. SPOILER ALERT: Be prepared to laugh — these former pols tend not to take themselves too seriously. CRISIS TV is hosted by The RP, former Kentucky State Treasurer Jonathan Miller. This week’s guests include:
This week’s topic — the Obama Administration’s IRS scandal. The panelists discuss where all of the President’s men (and women) have gone wrong, how they could have handled the crisis more effectively, and what advice they would share with the White House. The panelists discuss the lessons they learned from their own crises, detailed in the book they co-authored, The Recovering Politician’s Twelve Step Program to Survive Crisis. Click here to order, this week only, for only 99 cents. And without further ado, welcome to the shew….
Some people who claim to always go the “extra mile” –actually often only go a few extra yards. Or feet . And just hope nobody notices and measures. I have done that myself a few times. I find it helps to look like I am out of breath, so it will look like I really did go a full extra mile in working on a project In the future, I think we ought to consider the practical advantages of changing the phrase “going the extra mile” to “going the extra kilometer”
Once you go a full mile over what is required, you are just trying to show off. But a kilometer is more believable and sends the message you really do try harder. But not to an obsessive degree.  Click here to purchase e-book for ONLY 99 CENTS this week only The one thing you don’t want in politics or business is to be unpleasantly surprised. We pride ourselves on seeing every angle and knowing every pitfall; and when we don’t or we can’t, we hire consultants who supposedly do because there’s nothing that will throw you off your game faster than the unknown. So it was with particular attention to detail that my staff at the Republican National Committee (RNC) planned for me and over thirty members of the RNC’s Site Selection Committee to visit the three cities in the final running to host the 2012 national convention. It’s no secret that my tenure as RNC Chairman had more than its share of unpleasant surprises. So my instruction to the staff regarding the site visits was simple: “lean, clean and no surprises!” As the visits got underway, by any measure, they were going exceedingly well. These trips used to be about goodie bags and cocktail parties, but we had resolved to take a decidedly more business-oriented approach – with an emphasis on contracts, bus schedules, fundraising and hotel rooms; and as it turned out, the members preferred that (although they still wanted their cocktail parties). But as they say, “the best laid plans…” * * *
So when the executive director of the site selection committee, Belinda Cook, handed me the phone with a look of anger: “The office has been trying to reach you for the past hour; your cell is off” – I thought to myself: “Don’t be mad at me; you told me to turn it off!” But I would soon realize that she wasn’t angry about the phone. Rather, a major conservative web site, the Daily Caller, wanted a “comment” on a story it was about to run that a member of the RNC finance staff had spent $2000 at a Los Angeles strip club that featured a sexual-bondage theme. And to make matters worse, the reporter was inferring that I was there. I’ll spare you the first words I uttered at that moment. Read the rest of… Click here to read a recent article from The American Prospect about the “Not So Solid” Republican South. This is the first in a 4 part series, which really lays out the case for our collective work in the south.
Stay tuned for some exciting news from The Southern Project in the next few weeks!
Click here to purchase e-book for ONLY 99 CENTS this week only The first Correctional Officer (CO) I met was straight out of Deliverance. I came in with a young black guy who mumbled and a middle-aged Chinese man who spoke broken English, but at least I could decipher their words. The CO was harder to understand. Manchester, Kentucky is tucked in an Appalachian mountain hollow, and he had apparently never left. When he sauntered into the austere, concrete holding room and asked the Chinese man his name, the man replied, “Shoi-ming Chung.” “Sesame Chicken?” replied the CO; laughing uproariously and then repeating it twice as if it were the funniest thing he’d ever heard. He sent me to a heavyset nurse for a battery of questions. “Height and weight?” she asked. “5’6”, 120 pounds.” She examined my slight frame and frowned. “Education level?” “Ph.D.” She shot me a skeptical look. “Last profession?”
She rolled her eyes. “Well, I’ll put it down if ya want. If ya wanna play games, play games. You’ll fit right in – we got ones who think they’re Jesus Christ, too.” Another guard escorted me to a bathroom without a door. He was morbidly obese and spoke gruffly in a thick Kentucky drawl. “Stree-ip,” he commanded. I did. “Tern’round,” he barked. I did. “Open up yer prison wallet,” he ordered. I looked at him quizzically. “Tern’round and open up yer butt cheeks.” I did. Read the rest of… From The Missouri Times:
Click here to purchase e-book for ONLY 99 CENTS — this week only My own dark night of the soul. Without a crisis manager to guide me. At the age of 22, most of my friends had graduated college and were beginning to wear suits and ties and dress shoes and carry a sleek umbrella when it rained, as they went to work at enviable places like accounting and law firms and growing businesses and established organizations. I was doing none of those things and felt ostracized and dismissed by my peers and friends and loved ones who had run out of patience with me. I was out of all of my “second chances.” Hope from others had been displaced with sadness, concern and eventually disgust. Friends were calling my parents telling them I needed help and that they were worried for my safety. One of my old friends had just visited me while he was back in town and saw me in shambles, in a deliberately dark and dank apartment wearing only my dingy robe (ironically decorated with Roman Empire images), as I sat disheveled, unshaven and un-bathed amid a sea of empty vodka, bourbon and beer bottles. I had squandered my last few jobs and dropped out of college for three consecutive semesters from three different colleges. When my friend asked me what I was going to do next, I joked in my own macabre way that “I was torn between starting my own business and committing suicide.” I laughed through my pain, but he had only a look of concern and sad confusion. A few days after that, my father came to my apartment late on a rainy Sunday afternoon and knocked furiously on my door. He knew something was very wrong, but I kept the shades drawn, lights out and refused to answer. Finally, the knocks became kicks at the base of the door. Followed by more knocks that eventually trailed off with a sense of defeat I had come to recognize from others trying to help me. It was my father, a man whose time was precious and I’d always wanted more of; and I finally opened the door and walked outside. The bottom of the door had scuffmarks from his shoes; and my father was in his car, and I got in the passenger side. I said, “I’ve screwed up, Dad. I’ve really screwed up, and my life is a mess.” My voice cracked, and I looked down dejectedly as I began crying tears of desperation. My father was a man of action who had built Kentucky Fried Chicken, owned the Boston Celtics, and just finished serving a term as Kentucky’s Governor. He wasn’t accustomed to not having a quick answer to solve any problem that faced him. But he was bewildered, too. I remember him saying “we’ll get through it,” and that he would help find a way. He had heard of treatment centers for problems like mine, and maybe that’s what I needed to do. He said, “You are my flesh and blood, and the blood that runs through your veins runs through mine, too. We’ll figure this out. I love you and want to help however I can.” But, again, there were no quick fixes for how to deal with my problem. A few weeks after that, I moved back home with my mother, since I was not functional at either work or school and unable to care for myself with the kind of minimal self-care expected of some my age. I was a listless, beleaguered and bewildered soul. Mostly, ironically, confused. I had no idea what was really wrong with me or what next to do. I just knew something was terribly wrong, and I was out of solutions and out of any help from friends or family. One of the last nights I was in my apartment (an apartment, by the way, that the exterminator who visited routinely once told me was the worst kept apartment of the 4,400 he serviced monthly), I was standing alone in my bedroom trying to come up with a new plan. I looked at the world map hanging above my bed and decided what I needed to do was move. Read the rest of… From The Huffington Post:
Click here to read the full article. It’s never too early—or too late—for vindication: The ABA. The old American Basketball Association (ABA), with all its quirkiness. eccentric characters and hilarious stories, was also home to the greatest basketball players and basketball prowess on the planet during the league’s hey day in the mid 1970s. The NBA nervously sneered at the league that played with a “beach ball.” But as the stuffy NBA tried to marginalize it’s competitor league struggling with ticket sales and fiscal viability, the inevitable was happening. A merger. The nimble, dynamic but financially strapped ABA would merge 4 of its teams into the vaunted NBA in 1976. Many in the NBA privately believed none of the 4 teams would be around 4 years hence. What was the result? The first year after the merger almost half the NBA’s leading scorers were former ABA players from the merger. As well as the player who led the league in assists and steals. Nearly half the All-Stars were from the much ridiculed ABA. Even in that year’s championship series between two traditional NBA teams, 5 of the 10 starters were former ABAers. Most notably, however, was as the old NBA league adopted the playing style of the former upstart ABA league —shorter shot clocks, run-and-gun scorning, high-flying slam dunks a la Dr J, pressing defense, and the ABA signature 3 point shot—something remarkable happened. The NBA which seemed always to be playing in black and white, began playing basketball in technicolor. The league that looked like it learned the game of basketball from an Army training video, integrated the spirit and heart of the game of basketball that was so flamboyantly nurtured in the ABA. Thanks to what the NBA borrowed and learned from the ABA. TV revenue soared and professional basketball in the US became as beloved as pro baseball and football, perhaps ever more so. And pro basketball emulating this playing style exploded on to the international scene.
And our hometown team in Kentucky, the Kentucky Colonels, was the ABA’s all-time winningest team. Many of us, of course, wish the Colonels had stayed put. I certainly did and wish a better business case could have been made for the Colonels to merge with the NBA. We have debated for years and can continue to debate the merits of that decision, but one thing that is beyond debate anymore is that the American Basketball Association was truly as great as many of us secretly imagined. And each passing year further vindicates that belief. Even 37 years later! I’m pulling for the Spurs and the Pacers to have a brilliant NBA championship series, ABA -style!! The way great basketball was played back in the 70’s in our little bush league—the bush league that transformed how the rest of the world plays basketball. 37 years later I believe that vindication for the ABA can’t come too early or last too long. And the world of sports is better for it. |
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