News from all over
Feb. 1st, 2010 04:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
libertangoJames Fallows of The Atlantic has an extraordinary post today about bipartisanship in Congress, or the lack thereof. Money quotes are at the top and bottom:
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I mentioned to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
akirlu that I'd lately begun to wonder if someone had taken pictures of the hike up Diamond Head and posted them online. I went to Hawai'i on a business trip some years back, and did the climb, but didn't have a camera.
Sure enough, courtesy of Flickr:
A stitched panorama from Diamond Head. The hotel I was at was not on Waikiki, but rather the rightmost of the cluster of beachside buildings at the left of the photo. Surprisingly quiet.
A set of the hike itself, showing the long staircases, the tunnel, and the gun emplacement you have to crawl through. These fortifications aren't from WWII, as you might think, but WWI.
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I knew there was something I wanted to add:
The New York Times has a great interactive graphic on the proposed US Federal budget. Perhaps not quite as snazzy as WallStats' "Death and Taxes" for last year's budget that Brad Hicks pointed to a while back, but still very informative.
I got this note from someone with many decades' experience in national politics, about a discussion between two Congressmen over details of the stimulus bill:
"GOP member: 'I'd like this in the bill.'
"Dem member response: 'If we put it in, will you vote for the bill?'
"GOP member: 'You know I can't vote for the bill.'
"Dem member: 'Then why should we put it in the bill?'
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(T)he US now has the drawbacks of a parliamentary system -- absolute party-line voting by the opposition, for instance -- without any of the advantages, from comparable solidarity among the governing party to the principle of "majority rules." If Democrats could find a way to talk about structural issues -- if everyone can find a way to talk about them -- that would be at least a step. And the Dems could talk about the simple impossibility of governing when the opposition is committed to "No" as a bloc."
*^*^*
I mentioned to
akirlu that I'd lately begun to wonder if someone had taken pictures of the hike up Diamond Head and posted them online. I went to Hawai'i on a business trip some years back, and did the climb, but didn't have a camera.Sure enough, courtesy of Flickr:
A stitched panorama from Diamond Head. The hotel I was at was not on Waikiki, but rather the rightmost of the cluster of beachside buildings at the left of the photo. Surprisingly quiet.
A set of the hike itself, showing the long staircases, the tunnel, and the gun emplacement you have to crawl through. These fortifications aren't from WWII, as you might think, but WWI.
*^*^*
I knew there was something I wanted to add:
The New York Times has a great interactive graphic on the proposed US Federal budget. Perhaps not quite as snazzy as WallStats' "Death and Taxes" for last year's budget that Brad Hicks pointed to a while back, but still very informative.
