Is Everyone Off Attending the Inauguration Today?

We drank a bottle of Agrapart Blanc de Blancs Les 7 Crus to celebrate Bush's flight back to Texas and to honor Barak H Obama.

Like a beautiful lemon chess pie. And all the little tiny bubbles... yummmm.
 
I personally am looking forward to Jeb Bush's campaign. The campaign motto might be either "better than you might think, considering," or "not as bad as his brother was."
 
originally posted by Don Rice:
I thought Aretha was subdued, and not at her best.

No Fans of Yo Yo Ma out there? For me the Yo Yo Ma / Itzhak Perlman group nailed the vibe of the day best...
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Agreed on both. (Aretha is 66 years old. Maybe her voice isn't so good in 25F weather anymore.)
 
Re: Aretha, she insists her voice goes to hell when the temperature drops into the 50s. And in fact, the last time I saw her (outdoor venue), she was right. Apparently, she typically refuses to even attempt to sing if the temperature and humidity aren't to her liking. So when I first heard she was singing at an outdoor event, in D.C., in January, I was worried about this very thing.

Given that situation, I was actually pleasantly surprised; I expected worse, or a night-before change of singers.
 
originally posted by Cory Cartwright:
Such an opening, but I don't know the disposition of this board yet so I will let my joke go dormant for now.
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No, here jokes get explained, repackaged and reused endlessly. Reduce, reuse, recycle is the new "compassionate conservatism."

Mark Lipton
 
originally posted by Chris Coad:


I'm braising some short ribs, and as soon as Dr. Lisa returns from healing the sick and curing the afflicted, we're opening up an Edmunds St. John '05 Parmalee-Hill Syrah, toasting, and chowing down.
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decant, decant!

Anyway, I am overjoyed to see the Bush administration gone. I won't say he was the worst president in the history of the US (I reserve that title for Jackson) but he's a good contendor for second place.

Unfortunately I was working all night so no wine for me :(
 
originally posted by Jay Miller:


Anyway, I am overjoyed to see the Bush administration gone. I won't say he was the worst president in the history of the US (I reserve that title for Jackson) but he's a good contendor for second place.
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Jackson, Bush? At least neither of them let us wander into a civil war.
 
originally posted by Jay Miller:
originally posted by Chris Coad:


I'm braising some short ribs, and as soon as Dr. Lisa returns from healing the sick and curing the afflicted, we're opening up an Edmunds St. John '05 Parmalee-Hill Syrah, toasting, and chowing down.
Click to expand...

decant, decant!

Anyway, I am overjoyed to see the Bush administration gone. I won't say he was the worst president in the history of the US (I reserve that title for Jackson) but he's a good contendor for second place.

Unfortunately I was working all night so no wine for me :(
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Jackson -- "The devil himself"

For some reason that thought passes through my mind every time I look at a $20 bill.
 
originally posted by Jay Miller:

Anyway, I am overjoyed to see the Bush administration gone. I won't say he was the worst president in the history of the US (I reserve that title for Jackson) but he's a good contendor for second place.
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Jackson as worst ever? Strange choice, Jay. Now this is a list I can get down with. My candidates:

Warren G. Harding
Ulysses S. Grant
Calvin Coolidge
William H. Harrison*

*Partly unfair, since his Presidency was basically non-existent

Of the group, Harding gets my nod for "worst ever." Cases can also be made for Andrew Johnson and Millard Filmore, but IMO the four above are distinguished by a combination of poor personal characteristics and disastrous choices. (Far harder, IMO, is to decide who qualifies for "greatest ever" since external circumstances play such a large role in those Presidencies)

It is too soon to know what history will make of W, though my suspicion is that he will be viewed in the lowest decade of Presidents when historians get around to him.

Mark Lipton
(Erstwhile PoliSci minor and political junkie)
 
originally posted by Keith Levenberg:
I do have a little sympathy for the quixotic effort to restore "liberal" to its literal meaning of "believer in liberty," as Milton Friedman used it to describe himself. But then we'd have to call the libertarians liberals and the current liberals what? Socialists?
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Progressives.

It's the opposite of Conservative.

Liberalism everywhere else in the world means libertarian. It's only in the US that it has gotten garbled.
 
originally posted by Jay Miller:


I base it almost entirely on the Trail of Tears.
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Fair enough. He was a detestable human being, true, and his policies toward the Indians would make him a war criminal today, but it's important to be mindful that he was reflecting the sentiment of his times. Overall, his impact on the country was neutral-to-positive. His best attributes were his promotion of popular democracy ("Jacksonian democracy") and his facing down of Calhoun and South Carolina over the Nullification crisis, an important moment for the survival of the Federal Union. For that reason alone, I'd keep him out of a "worst of" list. YMMV, of course.

Mark Lipton
 
The Mount Rushmore of Worst Presidents Ever can't be complete without FDR, LBJ, and Carter. I'll leave a spot open for W. while we await the judgment of history.
 
originally posted by Keith Levenberg:
The Mount Rushmore of Worst Presidents Ever can't be complete without FDR, LBJ, and Carter. I'll leave a spot open for W. while we await the judgment of history.
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Sure it can.

Remind me never to discuss politics with you when we jeebus.
 
originally posted by Jeff Grossman:
originally posted by Keith Levenberg:
The Mount Rushmore of Worst Presidents Ever can't be complete without FDR, LBJ, and Carter. I'll leave a spot open for W. while we await the judgment of history.
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Sure it can.

Remind me never to discuss politics with you when we jeebus.
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Aren't you the least bit curious how one would back-up statements like these?

I know I am.

Real student of history, this one.
 
originally posted by Keith Levenberg:
Oh, sure, there are thousands of political ideologies and we have enough words in the English language to give each one of them their own label. But on the whole I don't think the broad left/right division in American politics is silly or meaningless, no matter how many sub-factions of "left" or "right" there are. The labels of "conservative" and "liberal," as they're used today in the U.S., don't have much to do with the literal meaning of those words, but that doesn't make them any less useful.
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What issues divide left from right?

If I'm against the death penalty but for a flat tax and the essential abolition of the IRS, what is that?

I think America is essentially a centrist and pragmatic country. If you ask people whether they believe in Socialized Medicine, they'll say no. If you ask them whether government should ensure basic healthcare, they'll say yes.

Not only that, but a capitalist system, like we have, completely stops working, like it has, when people vote against their own self-interest.

I do have a little sympathy for the quixotic effort to restore "liberal" to its literal meaning of "believer in liberty," as Milton Friedman used it to describe himself. But then we'd have to call the libertarians liberals and the current liberals what? Socialists?
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The American left is more like European center-right. So maybe Christian Democrats.

The American right would be more like extremist right in Europe. There may not even be an analogue.

You realize of course that Friedman has admitted that it doesn't really looks like Neo-Classicism works well for markets, right? Or do you have more of a business school understanding of markets? You know, basically buzzwords and meaningless descriptions like "conservative".
 
originally posted by VLM:
You know, basically buzzwords and meaningless descriptions like "conservative".
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Conservative is not meaningless. It refers to someone who is reluctant to change and wants to conserve. In the political sense, this has traditionally applied to people who wanted to conserve power among the elites and prevent the expansion of democratic rights. These were the huge political fights of the 18th and 19th centuries and much of the 20th century.

I agree this may not be the central political axis anymore (Conservatives vs. Progressives), except for the huge glaring issue of gay rights.

I also agree that these terms get mangled in the popular media.
 
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