Monday Roundup

Politics

January 15, 2013 12:02 am

I get backlogged on stories. And I hate open tabs. So here’s a smattering of stories I don’t have time to do full blog posts on but thought were interesting.

The White House put the kibosh on the Platinum Coin idea, the IOU idea and the 14th Amendment idea and the President had a presser today calling on the GOP to raise the debt ceiling. The death of the Coin caused much angst among the Platinum Front of Judea crowd (who also turned on Jon Stewart when he ridiculed the idea). But it’s yet another data point showing that as dumb as the President can be, he’s not as dumb as his supporters.

A good read on a pair of developers who have taken on Philadelphia’s entrenched trade unions. They bid out a project, gave a little over half the contracts to non-union businesses and became the target of union wrath and violence. A peace has been reached but the terms are unclear: the unions are saying the developers’ next project will be all-union, the developers are saying they’ll bid it out to everyone. It will be interesting to see if this cracks the trade union stranglehold on Philadelphia business or if the Pestronk Brothers give in.

The minute I heard Lance Armstrong was interviewing with Oprah, I knew he was going to confess. The sky is turning red with lawsuits and the Feds may get involved as well. This is going to get ugly.

At the President’s Reddit chat, one question he ignored that has gotten some fun discussion is “Would you rather fight 100 duck-sized horses or one horse-sized duck?” I’m not surprised he skipped it since it was probably much more substantive than most of the other questions. To me, it’s not even a question. You choose the horses. Ducks look nice on TV and they behave in a pond. But, like almost all fowl, they can be nasty violent dangerous creatures when they want to be. Horses, too, of course. But I’ve found birds to just be plain mean. Must be that dinosaur heritage.

Military suicides hit a record last year. It doesn’t seem to get that much attention, how much strain these wars are putting an increasingly narrow sliver of our nation. Let’s hope our politicians take a break from creating crises to figure out something that will help.

I’m sure we can have an argument about one of those things.

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Tags: Barack Obama, Lance Armstrong, Military, Philadelphia, Platinum coin, President, unions

3 comments

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evanshrugged says:

January 15, 2013 12:22 am at 12:22 am (UTC -4)

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West Virginia Rebel says:

January 15, 2013 12:55 am at 12:55 am (UTC -4)

Speaking of wars, it looks like we’re becoming increasingly involved in the one in Mali. America involved in a war in a former French colony; what could go wrong?
West Virginia Rebel recently posted..Dope Run

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Hal_10000 says:

January 15, 2013 9:09 am at 9:09 am (UTC -4)

Yeah, I was thinking out a blog post on that. I think we’re minimally involved at the moment.

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