"Although the right to vote was a condition had existed for 16 years on the day my mother was born," blogs Mitch Mulhall in comment #1, in response to reckless G, " I nevertheless join you in your end-zone dance over this achievement. That said, to me, one of the most troubling aspects of your activism is that you carry a torch for a people who do not extend to women anything like this status--this inalienable right (equality, not voting)--you care enough to write about. Your position on a Palestinian State would make so much more sense to me if you could draw a concrete connection between a Palestinian State and the liberation of women in Middle Eastern culture... but you never go there."
"I hope candidate Obama picks Senator Joe Biden for Vice President" Post blogger Mitch Mulhall writes. "The very idea of it makes me giddy over the rich entertainment possibilities... the talking heads in both major and minor media outlets are quick to toss Biden into VP mix as an obvious remedy to Obama’s dismal foreign policy experience. Whenever I hear pundits of any stripe go in deep for Biden, I grin from ear-to-ear and knock on wood, knowing this could easily lead to gaffes that get more mileage than Dick Cheney hitting Harry Whittington in the face with bird shot."
Breaking: Obama selects Biden
Blogger Raymond Learsey--an Aspen resident and an international expert on oil--writes about how oil got to cost so damn much. "The rise of sovereign-wealth funds and the trillions of dollars accumulated by Asian exporters and petroleum producers is prompting growing anxieties around the world," he blogs, "with increasing concerns that the funds will be used as financial weapons. The issue and the nature of sovereign-wealth funds dominated the recent meeting of the Group of Seven finance ministers. Their concerns were highlighted by the issued statement calling on the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank to examine the structure of the funds, their transparency and accountability. According to the Wall Street Journal the funds have $2 to $3 trillion dollars at their disposal and that could reach $10 trillion within the decade."
Posts filed under 'Politics'
On Aug. 26, 1920, the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, guaranteeing women the right to vote, was declared in effect.
My husband and I had an argument just this morning concerning whether activism really works to effect change and whether it really even matters. As an activist myself, I’m personally invested in the belief that it does work and it does matter. My husband is of the opposite opinion. In these all too frequent arguments (usually spurred by the publication of one of my letters to the editor) I often cite the women’s suffrage movement along with the civil rights movement as examples of how grassroots activism leads to changes in social attitudes and government policy.
Continue Reading August 26th, 2008
I thought about signing up for the now-near-famous-and-yet-to-happen Obama text message announcing his VP choice, but I detest cell phone text messaging on principle. I spent too many years studying English literature, refining my usage, and expanding my vocabulary to find the hackneyed, vanity-plate-brevity of text messaging a form of meaningful communication. And besides, while Obama has a rich field of experienced politicians to choose from, I have particularly high hopes for one possible outcome...
Continue Reading August 23rd, 2008
Well, my friends, if John McCain calls his audience “my friends” one more time I will never say the words “missing in action” again. If he refers to “my fellow Americans” again I will force-feed the Republican nominee with quotations from Chairman LBJ about marital fidelity.
The Straight Talker his ownself made his way to the rock-ribbed Republican Rocky Mountains Thursday for a late-summer idyll, stopping to shake the money tree in Vail and then again in Aspen, going home on the Straight Talk Express with something like $500,000 minimum—not so bad for half-a-day’s work and no ad hominem attacks. In between, under the gentle aegis of the Aspen Institute, he did what pols do when they come to the place where power speaks to power: they sit back like movie stars accepting lifetime achievement interviews on AMC, albeit without the kettle corn and film clips.
The moneyed interests hereabouts in Aspen and thereabouts in Vail long ago made their peace with the erstwhile maverick, deciding they could live with him and his melanoma in the face of Obama Nation. And why not? There was much to like about McCain in person on the stump—he was a war hero, my fellow Americans—including his Surging references to integrity, his faux-more-years liberalism, and his cornball jokes about turning his nose up on ethanol in Iowa.
Continue Reading August 14th, 2008
Aspen, CO, August 11, 2008 –– The Aspen Institute will host a special event featuring T. Boone Pickens, chairman and CEO of BP Capital Management, on Friday, August 15, 2008. The event will take place at 2:30pm at the Paepcke Auditorium on the Institute's Aspen Meadows Campus. Tickets ($10) will go on sale beginning August 11th at the Wheeler Box Office.
T. Boone Pickens, founder and chairman of BP Capital Management, is principally responsible for the formulation of the energy futures investment strategy of the BP Capital Commodity Fund and the BP Capital Equity Fund. With more than $4 billion under management, BP Capital manages one of the nation’s most successful energy-oriented investment funds. Pickens frequently utilizes his wealth of experience in the oil and gas industry in the evaluation of potential equity investments and energy sector themes. He has not been shy in predicting oil and gas prices and — more often than not — has been uncannily accurate.
Continue Reading August 11th, 2008
Knives have made a lot of news lately...
Death by stabbing is all too common. If only it were it possible to limit knife ownership, we could curb this unnecessary form of violence.
Although I would personally like to see as many civilian-owned knives eliminated from mainstream society as possible, I realize that this is not a politically realistic goal. Thus, I present my own, seven-point plan for knife control. If adopted, this plan can help put an end to knife violence once and for all.
Continue Reading August 1st, 2008
The Con Man dissects the phenomenon of Obama "The Messiah," then turns his attention to cities and even one state banning trans fats from fast-food menus.
Click here for "Con Games with Michael Conniff" for Wednesday July 21, 2008.
July 23rd, 2008
According to a majority of economists at U.S. banks and research groups polled by Reuters; “The economy has supplanted the Iraq war as the main issue in the November presidential election between Arizona Sen. McCain and Illinois Sen. Obama” and “The U.S. stock market would fare better in the first year after a victory by Republican presidential candidate John McCain than by his Democratic rival Barack Obama.” This despite the fact that “The poll also found that Obama held a 7-point lead over McCain in the presidential race, and had a small edge on the question of who would best manage the economy.”
Continue Reading July 23rd, 2008
The Con Man's open lines open up for sweet crude and Burlingate, then welcomes the man behind the Aspen Film presentation "Dali Llama Renaissance." Batting cleanup: Barry Schochet in the The Schochet Effect on Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and all things political.
Click here for he complete "Con Games with Michael Conniff" for Thursday July 17, 2008.
July 17th, 2008
Christopher Hitchens underwent waterboarding last February. He puts a lie to the notion that waterboarding “simulates drowning.” After undergoing this act, he claims waterboarding is no mere simulation. It’s drowning. “It would be bad enough if they did have something—suppose they wanted to know the where a relative of yours was, or a lover, say, ‘well, I’m going to betray them now, because this has to come to an end; I can’t take this anymore.’” Hitchens then goes on to pose the unthinkable: what if they got the wrong guy? Then, he posits, such a person would be in real danger of losing his or her mind...
Continue Reading July 15th, 2008
Presidential architect Karl Rove’s mainly miss-the-mark missives in the Wall Street Journal are a thing of beauty, but none have quite reached the level of co-opted op-ed pulchritude as his latest exercise in self-aggrandizement, modestly headlined “Barack’s Brilliant Ground Game.”
Karl Rove, far too executive-privileged to show up for Congressional testimony, nonetheless has all the time in the free world to tell his free market pals that Democratic Presidential nominee-to-be Barack Obama in “brilliant” because his is following Rove’s obviously brilliant strategems from 2000 and 2004, when he took a booze-free Texas back-slapper with a hitch in his delivery and nursed him to first place in our quadrennial Presidential beauty contest.
Continue Reading July 11th, 2008
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