Open Mic July 6

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On this first full week of the sum­mer, we lost Andy Grif­fith. We cel­e­brated the 236th anniver­sary of the date on the Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence, though with­out fire­works in many areas near the nation’s cap­i­tal, owing to a lack of elec­tric power. We learned that a tiny sliver of a penalty is viewed by the Repub­li­can estab­lish­ment as the largest tax increase in history…but accord­ing to Repub­li­can Pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Mitt Rom­ney it’s only a tax if it’s done by the fed­eral gov­ern­ment, not by a state. And con­crete evi­dence of the exis­tence of the incred­i­bly mas­sive Higgs bosons was at last found.

But it’s Fri­day, which means it’s your day to pick the sub­jects of discourse.

Don’t see an arti­cle on a par­tic­u­lar topic, but want to talk about it some­where? This is Open Mic. Talk about what­ever you want, but stay respectful.

We cre­ate a new Open Mic every week to give a clean slate, but feel free to add to this topic at any time.




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  1. I think a series of arti­cles about our Pres­i­dents would be fas­ci­nat­ing, Of course, I’m also eagerly await­ing your next the­o­log­i­cally themed arti­cle, too.

    But, I con­fess that Amer­i­can trivia has par­tic­u­lar inter­est for me, because my birth­day was this past Wednes­day, so I tend to get a lit­tle pos­ses­sive of my patri­o­tism. :-)    That, and my Amer­i­can his­tory classes were so woe­fully inad­e­quate, that I did a lot of inde­pen­dent read­ing… I had to, or I wouldn’t know any­thing hap­pened after 1865…

  3. Hi WA7th @ #92 we never played Free­bird but the enthu­si­as­tic audi­ence response in the cho­rus of Cot­ton Eyed Joe I still hold respon­si­ble for los­ing us our gig play­ing court­side at Hous­ton Rock­ets games. We had 2 minute arrange­ments of pop­u­lar soul, coun­try, and rock songs for the time­outs. Of course now that time is much more prof­itably used for in-​​stadium com­mer­cials (with no mute button!)

  4. Yes, dc. I share a birth­day with our 30th Pres­i­dent, Calvin Coolidge, though he was born 100 or so years before I was…  ;)

  5. RWH and Jerry Jeff both played here in April  (Gruene Hall) and JJ did again in May.

    Hous­ton doesn’t get the notice it should for the bands that came out of the area. 

  6. Mac, that’s an amaz­ing knowl­edge of his­tory! Get­ting gold stars from DC is no mean feat. :-)

    I  learned an odd bit of trivia just this year… (you’ve prob­a­bly always known this)… that 3 of the first 5 pres­i­dents DIED on the fourth of July. Adams, Jef­fer­son and Mon­roe. What a bizarre coincidence.

  7. I learned an odd bit of trivia just this year… (you’ve prob­a­bly always known this)… that 3 of the first 5 pres­i­dents DIED on the fourth of July. Adams, Jef­fer­son and Mon­roe. What a bizarre coincidence.

    It is bizarre. More so, Adams and Jef­fer­son actu­ally died on the same day (not merely the same date), within hours of each other.

     

  9. I have often thought that April 19th is a bet­ter con­tender for Inde­pen­dance Day; Octo­ber 19 has a claim as well.

  10. @DC.. More so, Adams and Jef­fer­son actu­ally died on the same day (not merely the same date), within hours of each other.

    Wow. TWO for­mer pres­i­dents dying within hours. Imag­ine if that hap­pened now. The cable net­works would be so mas­sively over­whelmed that they would implode, vapor­ize and turn into black holes.

  11. quote of the day, so far, from Michale Tomasky, thedai​ly​beast​.com

    The fact that Rom­ney has no actual jobs plan beyond let­ting the free mar­ket work its magic… It’s just end­less. Com­plete and will­ful vacu­ity. Vacu­ity as a mat­ter of prin­ci­ple. Almost vir­ginal vacu­ity, as if inter­course with facts were some­how deflow­er­ing, lead­ing to a lap­sar­ian state of loss of igno­rance. 

  12. Adams and Jef­fer­son were bit­ter ene­mies though most of their polit­i­cal careers, even though Jef­fer­son had served as Adams’ Vice Pres­i­dent. They became fast friends late in life. There is exten­sive and fas­ci­nat­ing cor­re­spon­dance between them. On his deathbed, Adams was afraid for the fate of the young coun­try, but he saw hope, for he said, as his final words, “Thomas Jef­fer­son sur­vives.” Jef­fer­son had actu­ally died a few hours before.

    That was July 4, 1826 — as Max said, fifty years to the day after the date on the Dec­la­ra­tion of Independence.

     

  13. @Doc… Almost vir­ginal vacu­ity, as if inter­course with facts were
    some­how deflow­er­ing, lead­ing to a lap­sar­ian state of loss of
    igno­rance.

    LOL! Thanks Doc, that was my first real chuckle of the day. (Also “lap­sar­ian” is a brand new word for me, and a good one, too.)

    Inter­roga­tor: “Mr. Rom­ney… is there any rela­tion­ship between you and the entity known as “fact?“

    Rom­ney: (squirm­ing uncom­fort­ably in chair, rub­bing hands on thighs)… “Well, that depends on what the mean­ing of “is” is.…”

    I won­der just how painful to watch the Octo­ber debates are going to be. For instance, some mod­er­a­tor is sure to ask him what exactly is the dif­fer­ence between his health care plan and Obama’s. Seri­ously, how on earth can he answer that question?

      Espe­cially with Obama sit­ting right there watch­ing him, wait­ing to pounce on and dis­man­tle what­ever he says.

  14. fil­istro,

    For instance, some mod­er­a­tor is sure to ask him what exactly is the dif­fer­ence between his health care plan and Obama’s. Seri­ously, how on earth can he answer that question?

    He’s going to fall back on his old chest­nut of “It’s up to the states, not the feds, to decide.”

  16. The states may well be the “lab­o­ra­tory of democ­racy”, but that does not mean that what is proofed in the lab, stays in the lab!

    Rom­ney “You can ask what­ever ques­tion you wish, I’ll answer the ques­tion I want to answer.”

  17. @filistro las­par­ian was new for me as well; its a good day when I learn a new word!@monotreme Thanks for that! Where is he when we need him?

  18. @DC...Rom­ney “You can ask what­ever ques­tion you wish, I’ll answer the ques­tion I want to answer.”

    That’s (pretty much ver­ba­tim) what Sarah Palin said dur­ing her debate with Joe Biden. It works, too… if you wink while say­ing it.

    I’m not sure Rom­ney can send lit­tle star­bursts zing­ing from the tele­vi­sion screen into Rich Lowry’s head, though. (Well, I cer­tainly hope not…;-)

  19. So, I was hop­ing to give some up-​​close obser­va­tions of Obama’s cam­paign stop in Cedar Rapids today. I picked up my tick­ets on Sun­day and cleared my sched­ule for today. Even got up extra early and ate a big break­fast, because I knew I’d miss lunch for this.

    How­ever, after arriv­ing very early and bak­ing for three hours in the July sun while wait­ing in line, we finally reached the shade of the Kirk­wood Com­mu­nity Col­lege John­son Hall doors–only ten peo­ple in front of us, tops–and we were turned away because there was no more room in the arena. We and the roughly 1000 peo­ple in line after us were encour­aged to watch his speech on video-​​feed to the adja­cent over­flow build­ing, where another 500+ peo­ple had already been directed. It was a bit chaotic, because there wasn’t enough room even in the over­flow area.

    So, I’m watch­ing on video, along with thou­sands of other Iowans who’d really rather they’d just picked a larger venue. I hear Carver Hawk­eye Arena was open today, and I bet we could’ve filled it with every­one who wanted to hear Obama speak live today!!!

  23. @DC

    Ya think? Enthu­si­asm for Obama around here is fever pitch, but I can’t speak for the rest of Iowa or any other swing state.

    So far this cam­paign sea­son, I’ve been to sev­eral ral­lies for Repub­li­cans, includ­ing Rom­ney, San­to­rum, and Paul. Only the enthu­si­asm of the Paulites comes close to what I saw today for Obama, but there are far fewer of them.

  24. mclever, that’s what it seems like to me as well. More sup­port­ers of Pres­i­dent Obama are excited about the elec­tion than are sup­port­ers of Rom­ney. The most enthu­si­as­tic are sup­port­ers of Ron Paul, but there’s not many of them, and I expect Rom­ney to piss them off at the convention.

    Mono, thanks for that link. One of the things I found dis­heart­en­ing was this:

    nearly 7 in 10 Amer­i­cans said Pres­i­dent Obama and his aides should
    answer all ques­tions related to the inves­ti­ga­tion — only 27 per­cent said
    they should con­tinue to invoke exec­u­tive privilege.

    It shows that the pub­lic is pretty unin­formed, since “Pres­i­dent Obama and his aides” already have “answer[ed] all ques­tions related to the [Fast and Furi­ous] inves­ti­ga­tion,” and inde­pen­dent research as shown there’s really noth­ing there (other than out­ra­geously lax gun laws in Arizona).

    But the same arti­cle does point out that “6 in 10 Amer­i­cans said the Repub­li­can inves­ti­ga­tion of Oper­a­tion Fast
    and Furi­ous was mostly to gain polit­i­cal advan­tage, while about a third
    said it was due to real eth­i­cal con­cerns,” so per­haps peo­ple aren’t quite as stoopid as Repub­li­cans nor­mally count on them to be.

  25. It amazes me that Repub­li­cans think it’s a good idea to waste 33 votes (so far) on sense­less polit­i­cal posturing.

     Not one vote on the Amer­i­can Jobs Act.

    Do Repub­li­cans think that real Amer­i­cans aren’t pay­ing atten­tion to their destruc­tive and waste­ful nonsense?