Club De Citoyens-American, 619 Market Street, Lowell MA USA — by Tony Sampas
June 21st, 2011
Street Life in Lowell Today
About and about today: granite curbing installation continues on Wamesit Hill; quiet at the Pollard Memorial Library this morning but lots of fire apparatus in the adjacent street; many people relaxing, seeking a shaded seat in Mary Bacigalupo’s Shattuck Street Victorian Garden (above); Jerry Beck of Revolving Museum fame spotted on Middle Street; outdoor coffee sippers of the business type at “Rosie’s” on Hurd; firetruck and EMT/SUV busy at the UTEC construction site; sidewalk umbrellas ready to be unfurled for the lunch and dinner crowd; a young Park Ranger leading a gaggle of young visitors along Market Street – caught up with the “Rock the Vote” and UMass t-shirt clad group ready to board four “River Hawk” busses at the ULM/ICC to continue on the orientation tour; kids in carriages throughout the downtown with mom or dad in tow; uniformed crew enjoying the outdoors canalside behind Middlesex Community College; Middle Street near Central under reconstruction; a local gal toting a soft quilt prepping for tomorrow’s Boardinghouse Park outdoor concert; banners and baskets of pink flowers herald the first day of Summer – street life in Lowell.
June 21st, 2011
Obama’s real deficit problem is the lack of enthusiasm among his supporters by Marjorie Arons-Barron
The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons-Barron’s own blog.
If President Obama loses his reelection bid in 2012, it may be because he has disappointed so many who had such high hopes for him in 2008. This surely is not true for a relative handful of individuals, who bundled campaign contributions and raised a lot of money for the President, and who were richly rewarded for their efforts.
This week, the Center for Public Integrity issued a report that 200 of those bundlers got posts in the administration, as ambassadors, key staff appointees, or members of influential advisory boards.
According to the report, 184 of 556, about a third, of Obama bundlers or their spouses got administration appointments. But four out of every five of the biggest bundlers (who raised more than half a million dollars) got “key administration posts.”
This, despite then-candidate Obama’s pledge to end this business-as-usual approach to politics. Clinton did it. Both Bushes did it, and Presidents before that. That Obama has kept pace with his oft criticized predecessors is disappointing. In fact, Obama’s catering to big donors is even greater than that of George W. Bush.Nor should we be mollified by a White House statement that having donated $50,000 or raised/bundled $500,000 didn’t ensure such plum posts as the reward but that having contributed handsomely shouldn’t disqualify someone. How unbelievably lame. And how unbelievably naïve of us even to have believed things would change.
There are other reasons for Obama supporters to be disappointed. As Congressman Michael Capuano pointed out at this week’s New England Council breakfast, in Washington’s polarized environment, the President has not been an effective negotiator. When Obama couldn’t get the Republicans to agree to a budget that included restoring the Bush tax cuts to family earnings over $250,000, he should have gone for a $500,000 cutoff, or even $1 million, just to walk away with something that established the principle that we can’t afford to continue the Bush tax cuts if we want to curb the deficit. Obama’s failure to bargain tough on that issue weakens his position in the debt ceiling showdown.
Obama’s actions in Libya, in apparent violation of the War Powers Act, is another disappointment, highly evocative of past Presidential adventurism and surprising from a President who taught Constitutional law. As Capuano, who is one of those suing the President for not going to Congress for approval of our Libyan military involvement, avers, “No one person should have the power to take the country to war…..If you can do it in Libya, you can do it in China or Iran. If Obama can do it, any president can do it.”
The overwhelming part of Obama’s base, like Capuano, will not defect to a different candidate, but at this point there’s clearly an enthusiasm deficit. How much might be measured by this quarter’s financing by small donors. An enthusiasm deficit could also play out in reduced Democratic turnout in next year’s election, particularly in such battleground states as North Carolina, Virginia, Colorado and Florida. How much excitement gets revived for Obama may hinge on whom the GOP selects for its nominee, and that is far from clear.
Please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below.
June 21st, 2011
FYI: The Doors in Lowell
The Doors played the Commodore Ballroom in Lowell on August 15, 1967. Chris Simondet of The Doors site on Facebook provided that information to me. He said the show is a “phantom show” in The Doors chronology of performances and that nobody knows or remembers much about it other than there was a bad microphone and Jim Morrison asked if Jack Kerouac was in the house. I’ve also heard a rumor that Morrison went looking for Kerouac in the Highlands but didn’t find him. “Light My Fire,” released in April 1967, was still a red-hot single in August 1967, the legendary “Summer of Love” on the West Coast and everywhere else that embraced the spirit.
June 21st, 2011
The real Rat Patrol
Those of us who grew up watching The Rat Patrol harbor a latent interest in desert warfare of World War Two. While The Rat Patrol was entertaining TV, it also took some historical liberties. The series was loosely based on the British Army’s Long Range Desert Group, an elite unit that used Chevrolet trucks (shown above) more often than jeeps to conduct raids and reconnaissance patrols behind the lines of the German Africa Corps.
If you share my interest in this topic and are looking for a quick summer read, check out Killing Rommel, a novel by Steven Pressfield, the author of numerous works of historical fiction, some of which are required reading in today’s US military. Killing Rommel follows a young British Army lieutenant who is originally assigned to a tank unit but who is then detached to the LRDG and embarks on a series of dangerous missions across the desert. While the story is enjoyable fiction, Pressfield’s detailed description of the tactics, equipment and logistics of both armored units and mounted reconnaissance units in the North African Campaign of World War Two make this a valuable and very interesting book.
June 21st, 2011
Take a 12th grade history quiz
The “Week in Review” section of this Sunday’s New York Times reported that only “only 12% of a representative sample of the nation’s high school seniors demonstrated proficiency in the subject last year” according to recent National Assessment of Educational Progress test results. While it’s critically important that we improve the effectiveness of our history education nationwide, I wonder whether the student test scores are reflective of the level of history literacy of the US population at large. Judge for yourself by taking THIS nine question excerpt from the NAEP test.
June 21st, 2011
This Isn’t Good: Ocean Life Endangered
It’s Sustainability Week in Lowell, and although we don’t live on the coast in Lowell our state is a coastal state—and everything is connected even if you live in Kansas. There’s a new report from international scientists sounding the alarm about threats to ocean life and possible severe consequences if conditions do not change. Read Travis Donovan’s article about it on aol and huffingtonpost.com.
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