Our famous linkfest offering you links to sites with MANY different viewpoints. Links do not necessarily reflect the opinion of TMV or its cobloggers.
Today The Nation Honors Gerald Ford and so much has been written about him (pro and con) and about his pardon of the man he replaced, President Richard Nixon. A MUST READ comes via the always thoughtful Mark Daniels who starts out with this:
Richard Nixon thought that Gerald Ford was his insurance policy. It turns out that the unassuming man from western Michigan was our insurance policy.
Read it all.
A New Infopacked Website Has Been Created by a group that describes itself as “an independent grassroots organization” that wants to make an increasingly popular Democrat President. Can you guess who that Democrat is? Here’s the answer.
It’s 2007 So Let’s Celebrate American Built Cars! Or should we?
Guess What Big Business Is Letting The Communist Party Set Up A Branch At One Of Its Stores? It is a bit of a surprise… P.S. Yours truly LIKES this company and enjoys shopping there. (Can we set up a TMV branch at one of their stores?)
Some New Year’s Thoughts: From Crooks and Liars’ John Amato and from Blogs for Bush’s Mark Noonan. Mark writes about the war on terror and about Iraq, Iran…but then his last paragraph has the most critical assertion: “The Chargers will win the Super Bowl. Unless they choke. Which is always possible. But, man, isn’t LT phenomenal?” (This is written from San Diego so, yes, there is a definite bias here…)
More Thoughts On Saddam’s Trip South: This post gives you two opinions, from two people who we respect..
Some More Reaction To Saddam’s Execution — from Iraqi bloggers. They’re not complimentary to either the Iraqi government or President George W. Bush. We noted in an earlier post that this could prove to be a political boomerang and it appears it may be shaping up that way.
A Big Fat Problem: Ezra Klein has an intriguing look at “the obesity myth,” using a New Republic piece as a take-off point. Read it all but here’s a tiny taste (excuse the expression) 4 U:
The issue isn’t fat, but fitness. Problem is, though we all “know” a sedentary lifestyle and junk food diet are unhealthy, we spend our time combatting what we perceive as the aesthetic end point of such habits, not the root causes. And then, through diet pills, eating disorders, and neuroses, we try to slim down without shaping up.
It’s a welcome take on an extremely serious subject (lives ARE at risk) — particularly to obsessive computer users, those who write for hours on computers and those who spend time reading weblogs and hours writing comments to weblog writers telling them where to stick their computers. Read it, then take a friend out and discuss it over a pizza.
If You Ever Wondered How A Centrist Was Created then just read this. It’s as good an explanation as you’ll find. Too often centrists, moderates are demonized or belittled. But here’s a little fact: they don’t just happen; they are often created…often unintentionally. Here’s a tiny section from Central Sanity’s MUST READ post:
My hope for the new year is that, the next time hysterical partisans cause us to question our commitment to centrist solutions, we remember two things.1. Gridlock is the partisan’s playground, the consequence of people who refuse to define what they can live without.
2. To break gridlock, to make progress, every citizen and public official must eventually sacrifice partisan ideologies and principles and embrace some level of independent, centrist, moderate thinking.
One of the key problems is that patterns are difficult to break, as any psychiatrist can tell you.
Psychological patterns are tough to break. So are family patterns. Interpersonal relationship patterns. Eating patterns. So, too, are political patterns. Just like someone who swears they will never smoke again, the WILL must be there to shift from polarization and confrontational politics to an acknowledgement that consensus can achieve national unity, bolster the legitimacy of governmental decisions and policies and achieve hard-nosed results.
But it’s difficult to do in an age when not only is there demonization, but it is the political strategy of choice (it usually works) and has become a key part of the political culture..the only political culture young people now growing up have seen.
A Lot Of People Want The Democrats To Win In 2008 — although some have different reasons why…
And Here’s What You All Have Been Waiting For: The Best Musical Video ever made.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.