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Krystal Ball: How Each State Will Follow the Health Care Ruling

By Krystal Ball, on Fri Jul 13, 2012 at 1:30 PM ET

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

 
Krystal Ball   ,  

John Y’s Musings from the Middle: Mental Molding

By John Y. Brown III, on Tue Jul 10, 2012 at 12:00 PM ET

Mental Molting or Convergence?

Once upon a time I had a well trained mind. Disciplined; respectful; dutiful; useful and predictable.

It used to be when I was given a new topic for consideration my mind would race breathlessly to pull up as much relevant information as possible and have it ready to stand at attention and be manipulated or marshaled as needed to impress or persuade.

Not so much anymore.

I don’t know if it is some glorious harmonizing of the totality of our mental capacities that now–as my mind ripens with age– allows me to hear a new topic for consideration and, for several minutes immediately following, hear the stark sound of crickets. And then follow up with the expressionless expression exuded by Jack Nicholson’s character in the final scene of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest as we realize he’s been lobotomized. Maybe it is some form of intellectual convergence at work. But I suspect it’s something different and inglorious.

Like pruning or mental molting. New topics I hear these days stimulate either nothing or something random I later try to make a logical excuse for popping into my mind.

For example, I was discussing the news website Digg.com. After listening for several minutes about it all I could think of was the lyric “Dig this!” from The Main Ingredient singing “Everybody Plays the Fool.”

And now I’m trying to introduce the song as a logical and relevant part of our discussion about Digg.com.

So, if you can relate, Dig this!

And let’s hope others only think we’re “playing the fool.”

Yeah. It’s just an act. Funny, huh?

 
John Y. Brown, III, Musings from the Middle   , ,  

Artur Davis: The Silver Lining is Dark

By Artur Davis, on Mon Jul 9, 2012 at 8:30 AM ET

Having argued in my previous posting that the Supreme Court’s squeaker on healthcare vindicates the left’s strategy of winning by marginalizing opposition, I am not in the camp that sees a silver constitutional or legal lining (the politics is a different story as I suggested earlier). A significant number of conservative scholars, and a few of their liberal counterparts, have a different view.

Even assuming that at least some of the conservative sentiment is the desire to find comfort in defeat, and that some liberals are engaging in the intellectual version of being graceful winners, there is some core of truth here: upholding the mandate on commerce clause grounds would have linked the power to regulate a market with the power to compel participation in it.  Justice Ginsburg’s concession that the power’s only limitation is practicality and political modesty is much less dangerous in a concurrence than a majority opinion.

But the fact that five votes coalesced around a weakening of the commerce clause is cold comfort when the fifth vote hinged on blowing the lid off of the tax and spend power.  That taxing power, which looked until the day of the ruling like a straightforward ability to add an official levy to commercial activity, now looks ominously broader. As of now, it as limitless as the government’s imagination, as long as it not so high that it turns into a de facto penalty or a fine. Or, in Chief Justice Roberts phrasing, as long as it is “just a tax hike”, all is fair.

Read the rest of…
Artur Davis: The Silver Lining is Dark

 
Artur Davis   ,  

RP Jason Grill on the Supreme Court’s Healthcare Ruling

By Patrick Derocher, on Fri Jul 6, 2012 at 3:00 PM ET

Former Missouri State Representative Jason Grill appeared on WDAF-4 in Kansas City to discuss the political implications of the Supreme Court’s ruling on President Obama’s healthcare law.

 
Jason Grill   ,  

Greg Coker: Employee Engagement

By RP Nation, on Thu Jul 5, 2012 at 3:00 PM ET

Check out Friend of RP Greg Coker’s new video on employee engagement:

 
The RP   ,  

Arafat Probably Died of AIDS

By Jonathan Miller, on Thu Jul 5, 2012 at 10:00 AM ET

Recent reports have some speculating — most prominently his widow — that the late PLO President Yasir Arafat may have died from illicit poisoning.

Larry Ben-David (NOT the Israeli version of Larry David) argues in The Times of Israel that the claim is a distraction from the clear probability that Arafat died of AIDS:

Less romantic and mythical, however, is the more likely cause of Arafat’s death – AIDS.

Arafat’s sexual proclivities have been an open secret for years. The former head of Rumanian intelligence, Lt. Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa , disclosed in his book “Red Horizons,” that one of his officers reported, “the ‘Fedayee’ [Arafat’s code name] is in his bedroom making love to his bodyguard. The one I knew was his latest lover. He’s playing tiger again. The officer monitoring his microphones connected me live with the bedroom, and the squawling almost broke my eardrums. Arafat was roaring like a tiger, and his lover yelping like a hyena.”

In an in-depth 1976 biography of Arafat, writer Thomas Kiernan chronicled the life of a young Arafat in Cairo. When Arafat discovered his girlfriend, Jinan al-Oraby, was friendly with the daughters of the Harkabis, an Egyptian Jewish family, he arranged for the murder of their father. When Jinan expressed sorrow for her friends, “Yasser went into a rage… he proceeded to beat me, tearing my clothes off…he threw himself on me… He tried to penetrate me, but he could not do so. This made him even more irrational.”

Kiernan also relates Arafat’s relationship with a boy, Ahmed, whose parents ended up on the Israeli side of the border after the 1948 war. An associate of Arafat’s related, “Yasser tried to get the boy to publicly denounce his parents…Yasser really loved the boy. He was delicate, sensitive, like a flower. He was very much a part of Yasser’s inner circle – four of five boys who lived in the same place, and well, you can imagine what I mean.”

Kiernan continued: Arafat held a “kind of formal hearing for the boy” because of his refusal to denounce his parents. “Arafat sobbed and sobbed as [a young associate] proceeded to castrate the boy. The next day the boy was dead.”

Arafat’s own personal doctor shares this opinion:

 
The RP   , ,  

John Y’s Musings from the Middle: Be Yourself

By John Y. Brown III, on Wed Jul 4, 2012 at 12:00 PM ET

Sometimes the only way to fit in is to simply be yourself.

Just went to truck stop to fill up. I notice when I’m inside a truck stop I try to act a little more manly. I stand up taller, scowl a little, and try to look like I know how to chew tobacco and operate a two way radio.

And never, ever buy a bottled Starbucks latte. And I even believe I may fool some people.

But today I walked into restroom and caught a glimpse of myself wearing a pressed button-down shirt, khaki slacks and dress shoes with tassels. I’m not sure I’m really fooling anyone after all.

I can either try harder to fit in or just accept I never will and just be myself. And buy the Starbucks latte.

 
John Y. Brown, III, Musings from the Middle   , ,  

Krystal Ball: Bobby Jindal Uncovers Obamacare Plot

By Krystal Ball, on Tue Jul 3, 2012 at 3:00 PM ET

Bobby Jindal uncovers secret liberal plot to mandate tofu. Who leaked it??? [ABC News]

 
Krystal Ball   , ,  

Krystal Ball: Great Health Care Timeline

By Krystal Ball, on Mon Jul 2, 2012 at 3:00 PM ET

Great timeline of what is implemented and when in the Affordable Care Act. Already prescription drugs are more affordable for seniors. [Doctors for America]

 
Krystal Ball    

John Y’s Musings from the Middle: Mythology and Life

By John Y. Brown III, on Mon Jul 2, 2012 at 12:00 PM ET

Mythology and life.

Much of mythology is centered around the paradigm of “The hero’s journey.” (See below)

“I think people wake up to the fact that they are the hero in their life when they get tired of being a victim of it.” Robert Walker

I hope that you and I are both participating in our life’s journey.

And that we realize whatever story we may tell others, we know deep down that the we are the character expected to be the hero in our life’s journey.

If you are not the hero in your own life story, who will be?

 
John Y. Brown, III, Musings from the Middle   ,  
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