Looking for excellence

[Ann Althouse Wordle of the Second Debate]  Also,Wired -Threat Level’s story about Wordle and the party conventions is where my fascination with the idea began.

Senator Barack Obama should be in an excellent mood after a pretty good outcome to the candidates’ second debate.   Obama’s campaign for CHANGE has been marked by excellence almost from the beginning.  From announcing his candidacy in Springfield, Illinois, to the recent debate, Senator Obama has gotten the support of millions because of his excellent approach.  From bringing hope to exercising leadership, Barack Obama may be our next president.  His theme, “Change We Need, resonates because of realities such as this poll highlighted at Think Progress: “Americans’ satisfaction drops to all-time low of 9 percent*.”

“A Country in Shambles, Under GOP Rule#“ is a result of Republican disdain for excellence. George W. Bush dismissed global warming, even though thousands of scientists knew it was there.  Our current president (OCP) appointed hacks and cronies to high administration positions; and many of them were just awful. To quote from AlterNet, “The overarching reality of the country is that we’ve lived under unchallenged Republican rule, and the country has virtually collapsed on every level.”

This is not what signifies excellence according to lawmakers#, but the very opposite : “Waxman bashes AIG’s luxury spending,” from Politico.com. The current world wide economic crisis has been precipitated in part by the lack of excellent people in charge in the economic arm of the Bush administration. It is hard to see even a glimmer of competence here.  Henry Paulson, Chris Cox and Ben Bernanke are cited for lack of consistency of policy views in a very fine piece of investigative journalism by Kristen Jones at ProPublica. It is titled “Top Regulators Once Opposed Regulation of Derivatives.” To quote:

The chiefs of the federal regulatory agencies — Henry Paulson, Chris Cox and Ben Bernanke — have each called for better regulation of derivatives, the financial instruments at the center of the current crisis. Yet a look at their Senate confirmation hearings suggests they once held quite different views.

In what other time would job search amount to good news? Two of the excellent core decisions of the Obama campaign have been, 1) a commitment to helping jumpstart the economy with jobs, and 2) U.S. energy independence. In that vein this dual good news story comes from Cathy Zoi, CEO of the WE campaign (www.wecansolveit.org) 10/3/08: “This past Saturday, tens of thousands of people attended more than 670 events in all 50 states for the Green Jobs Now National Day of Action. The rallying cry: “Hey Washington — It’s time to Repower America with clean, green jobs!”

Excellent comic relief is featured every day at the end of my Congressional Quarterly-Behind the Lines Newsletter by David C. Morrison. I conclude today’s post with this very funny example.  It is quoted from the 10/7/08 newsletter: “First, do no harm:”

“Thirty dual-use robots dispatched to help victims of last week’s massive mudslides in Ecuador have malfunctioned, leaving their rescue mode software inoperable and their warfare programming on autodrive,” Future Update updates. “The broken robots have killed at least 10 survivors of the disaster whom they mistakenly identified as terrorists. Federal Emergency Management Corporation which manufactures the robots, has a team working around the clock to try to reboot the units’ rescue functionality, company spokesman Elmer Gensee said yesterday in a news conference. The Pentagon first introduced the dual-mode robot during thehurricanes that ravaged the Texas gulf region in 2008. Halliburton, the parent company of FEMC, acquired the devices as part of its purchase of departments ofDefense and Homeland Security in 2021. The company then upgraded, rebranded and integrated the robots into its international security and disaster reliefoperations.”

Hat Tip Key: Regular contributors of links to leads are “betmo*” and Jon#.

[My first Wordle above]

(Cross-posted at The Reaction.)

My “creativity and dreaming” post today is at Making Good Mondays.

Technorati tags: news news and politics politics second debate excellence

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Sirens Chronicles gets noticed in the Blogosphere..And we pass on the love..

Our group blog has only been up and running since July 07. At times I have considered pulling the plug, it is a lot of work to keep this site running and its been a very hard winter for me physically, not to mention its a pain in the ass keeping a gaggle of writers in the flock. I would of pulled it down months ago if not for Betmo..I love you sista woman for everything you do for this blog and for me. We get a respectable amount of hits, but not a lot of dialog in the comments section. The writers are the only reason this site is still up. All of you freaking rock!!! If we didn’t have the writers we do..we would not be here. We now include male writers..it’s not nice to discriminate.. This week has seen Sirens get a couple of atta-girls from the following sites:

Chet Scoville, who writes his own blog and also contributes to, among others, Shakesspeares Sister has given us the E for Excellence Award.

Our own Jolly Roger has also bestowed some very kind words for our site too..Thank you JR

Rotus has also given us a nice mention in his E for Excellence Awards too!

These acknowledgments made me feel good, as the administrator, and they should make all of you wonderful, thoughtful Patriots/Writers who write here, feel warm and fuzzy too.

You are Sirens: Betmo, Dezzy, Jolly Roger, Fran, the folks from Coalition for a Democratic America, Spadoman and Sagefever, .Thank You for giving the blogosphere your wisdom and your thoughts. Thank You to the Angry Black Bitch..a Superwoman if there ever was one, who allows Sirens to crosspost her intriguing posts. A heartfelt Thank You to everyone that has contributed at one time or another here..You know who you are I hope.

Now, the Blogs which are “due” an Excellence Award, as far as I can tell, are as follows:

Two Crows-She IS my heroine, she is a Siren among women. Wish she wrote here.

Man Eegee- My brotha. He speaks the truth and it all makes sense.

DarkBlack-this man does not pull punches..and that is a good thing. Long live Dark Black and his political art!

KonaGod-just because. No one can cover so many issues at one time and make perfect sense.

BigAssBelle-Not because she writes here..but because NO ONE tells a story like she does and she doesn’t do it often enough.

Orcinus-Its awesome and professional. Nuff’ said. I am sure this blog has received numerous awards.

Omnipotent Poobah-This man, well..he is the man. We all should personally make half this much sense when attacking the issues and the idiots.

RawDawg-Because he speaks his mind and he holds no grudges. His blog is truly a roundtable, warts and all.

Big Fella.-He has the regular blog..and the Fight PTSD blog. This man is committed. We should all be this committed.

Anthony- He is a a wonderful read. Common Sense and intelligence in one place. Can we bottle it?

I am sure if I asked the writers here at Sirens, they would have many other blogs to include. That is why I didn’t’ ask them…for the sake of brevity. Forgive me Sirens writers for not getting your input.

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