Community Matters

(Community Matters) The Marfa 100 ride, benefiting Marfa Public Radio and LIVESTRONG

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(Community Matters) “The threat of the infiltration of Sharia, or Islamic law, into the American court system is one of the more pernicious conspiracy theories to gain traction in our country in recent years.”

– proud & appreciative of Abe and ADL

Op-Ed: Shout down the Sharia myth makers

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(Community Matters) “There is nothing wrong with our country,” Pres. Obama says. “There is something wrong with our politics.”

Hat Tip: David Gail

(Community Matters) I’m not naming names. Just wondering how successful most would rate the 16 year career of a Congressman who during those 16 years:

has sponsored 95 bills since Jan 9, 1995 of which 84 haven’t made it out of committee and 3 were successfully enacted. . . . .has co-sponsored 1,208 bills during the same time period.

Two of the three were renaming federal buildings (one post office and one federal building in McAllen).

(Community Matters)

The executive can’t go off on a half-cocked ideological bender like a freshman GOP Teabagger representing some God-awful district in some meaningless gulf coast backwater populated with GED-holding, near-poverty-line-living, batsh1t evangelicals.  He’s essentially a pretty centrist guy, campaigned as such, and is governing as such. It’s in his nature to go for the grand bargain. He told us that 3 yrs go.

There are elements within the GOP that even most of my most conservative of friends find quite threatening.  Many of these guys were acting as if they had no clue of what the impact of destroying the “US Treasury debt as synonymous with the Risk Free rate” reality would be.  They’re just radical idiots, pure and simple.  My only fault with the POTUS is not calling them out for being just that.  Blame does not, indeed, “fall on all sides”.  Radical elements w/in the GOP and their careless brinksmanship created this crisis and they bear the entirety of the blame.

That said, we do have crazies within the Democratic party as well.  It’s just that we’re better at relegating them to the kids table of ideological discourse.  The Republicans allowed theirs to walk right up to the grown up’s table, pull out daddy’s chair, and take a dump on it.

I could go on and on but I have to get back to putting my tax cuts to work creating jobs, thank you very much.

Entirely inappropriate to post this since I don’t have permission from the writer – who I don’t know but the email string was forwarded to me. Sorry, just couldn’t resist

(Community Matters)  NY Times Sunday Review: What Happened to Obama?

I don’t intend these reflections as publicly breaking rank but in the belief we benefit from public dialogue on issues of such importance.

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(Community Matters) I’d say the “insiders” aren’t likely inside if they are talking like this

(Community Matters) Gotta love Maryland Gov O’Malley – thanks for standing up for separation of church & state. Churches can decide their own positions but this should not impact the public debate about equality of all Americans. Towleroad story: Maryland Governor O’Malley Resisted Pressure from Baltimore Archbishop to Reject Marriage Equality

(Community Matters) GOP presidential hopefuls now criticizing President Obama for the S&P downgrade*.

I’m pretty sure Bachmann’s, Pawlenty’s, Ginrich’s & Romney’s overt support against compromise caused the downgrade. We would have had a $4 trillion deficit reduction otherwise

*I chose not to debate the downgrade. If there is a silver lining, it promotes substantive conversation about our long term finances & whether or not American exclusivity still exists

(Community Matters) Dr. Paul Farmer (founder of Partners in Health) will be in Austin on Saturday at the home of Roy and Mary Spence for the Students of the World Gala. Students’ founder, Courtney Spence is announcing the launch of a partnership between the creative communities of Austin and Jacamel, Haiti.

(Community Matters) from our friend Eric Price, founder of Price Wealth Management

While there has been much discussion around the recent S&P downgrade of U.S. debt, our feeling is that this news simply brought more instability to an already fragile capital markets. We believe the more relevant issues to focus on in terms of the financial markets would be the state of the global economic recovery going forward and the overall health of the European Union (sovereigns and ultimately the banks).

If the slowing of the economy was a standalone event, we would be starting to add to risk assets at these valuations. However, due to the global complexity of the European issues, we continue to remain cautious.

In order to methodically and routinely gauge whether this European situation creates another 2008 in the markets, we are watching the actions of the ECB (bond purchases and passing of The Stability Fund) and the activity in the interbank and short-term credit markets.

(Community Matters) Way fun with our friends in Montana

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