Setting the stage

It's almost impossible to read the Republican responses to Obama's State of the Union address. It is as if they weren't even in the same chamber when the speech took place. But, it is not surprising that the GOP should pick a woman to deliver its formal rebuttal given all the flack they have been getting recently. Unfortunately, Cathy McMorris Rodgers just repeated the same old tropes.

As Barack Obama said it is time the Republicans accept the Affordable Care Act and suggest means of improving it. The Act is now firmly in place and is providing many of the benefits it was intended to do. A good first step by Republican governors would be to approve Medicaid expansion in their states so that more people can have access to affordable health care.

However, the big take-away as far as conservatives are concerned appears to be Obama stating he would use the full power of his executive authority to move forward on policies that the Republicans continue to block in Congress. This seems to have outraged the GOP, who are now calling him an "imperial president." Where were they when George Bush proclaimed himself a "war president," using his greatly enhanced executive authority to push forward his conservative agenda?

On another note, Rand Paul seems to think the economy hasn't been growing these past four years, despite all the positive economic indicators. Once again, he uses the opportunity to extol even more tax cuts and less government spending, being a self-proclaimed Libertarian.

It gets incredibly tiresome, which is why I have to hand it to President Obama for keeping his cool and addressing Congress in civil terms, even though it has fought him every step of this way. This includes members of his own party who blocked his attempt to close Gitmo and now attempt to put riders on the Affordable Care Act.

Unfortunately, there is no way to really move forward until these intractable elements are removed. Mitch McConnell would be a good place to start. The Democrats should make every effort to get Alison Lundgren Grimes elected in Kentucky, especially since this is one state where the Affordable Care Act is working, thanks to the strong support of Governor Steve Beshear.

But, Obama's speech addressed many issues including minimum wage, gender discrimination in the work place, and rebooting American industry. He pointed to numerous positive examples where his administration has taken the lead, and those where his wife Michelle and Jill Biden have taken the lead. It was a strong speech, laden with compelling anecdotes, which showed he is in touch with the American mainstream. Sadly, the Republican party is not.

We can only hope he makes this a "Year of Action."

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

Welcome to this month's reading group selection. David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908. At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades. Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society. I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran. Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, noting the gro

Dylan in America

Whoever it was in 1969 who named the very first Bob Dylan bootleg album “Great White Wonder” may have had a mischievous streak. There are any number of ways you can interpret the title — most boringly, the cover was blank, like the Beatles’ “White Album” — but I like to see a sly allusion to “Moby-Dick.” In the seven years since the release of his first commercial record, Dylan had become the white whale of 20th-century popular song, a wild, unconquerable and often baffling force of musical nature who drove fans and critics Ahab-mad in their efforts to spear him, lash him to the hull and render him merely comprehensible. --- Bruce Handy, NYTimes ____________________________________________ I figured we can start fresh with Bob Dylan. Couldn't resist this photo of him striking a Woody Guthrie pose. Looks like only yesterday. Here is a link to the comments building up to this reading group.

Team of Rivals Reading Group

''Team of Rivals" is also an America ''coming-of-age" saga. Lincoln, Seward, Chase et al. are sketched as being part of a ''restless generation," born when Founding Fathers occupied the White House and the Louisiana Purchase netted nearly 530 million new acres to be explored. The Western Expansion motto of this burgeoning generation, in fact, was cleverly captured in two lines of Stephen Vincent Benet's verse: ''The stream uncrossed, the promise still untried / The metal sleeping in the mountainside." None of the protagonists in ''Team of Rivals" hailed from the Deep South or Great Plains. _______________________________ From a review by Douglas Brinkley, 2005

Rick DiguetteJanuary 29, 2014 at 3:18 PM
As Bill Keller notes at the New York Times, the Republicans will continue their campaign of "confrontation and sabotage" until the American people start voting them out of office.
James FergusonJanuary 29, 2014 at 3:44 PM
Sadly, true. They seem to know no other way.

Dispatches from Vilnius

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