SandBoxBlogs: Aspen Daily News "Ideas Festival lineup set"

Carolyn Sackariason:
"This summer’s Aspen Ideas Festival lineup includes roughly 300 speakers, and topics of discussion are as diverse as contemplating how to deal with the pressures of an exploding world population, the roots of societal values, and America’s obsession with sports and athletes.

New this year will be a block party for the public, on July 1, at Rio Grande Park, said Kitty Boone, vice president at the Aspen Institute and the primary organizer of the Aspen Ideas Festival, which also is presented by The Atlantic magazine. There will be numerous activities at the block party, as well as music and zumba dance lessons, Boone said.

Boone said programming for the public during the week-long conference is currently being scheduled; tickets go on sale June 20. There will be events open to the public held all over town during the week.

Passes to the eighth annual festival, which runs June 27 to July 3, have been sold out since the spring and cost $2,750 each. Six hundred people purchased passes...." (Read more?  Click title)

"Unapologetic pursuit and tracking of patterns within the news others make since 2010."

SandBoxBlogs: The Atlantic "How to Turn Republicans and Democrats Into Americans"

Mickey Edwards:

"Angry and frustrated, American voters went to the polls in November 2010 to “take back” their country. Just as they had done in 2008. And 2006. And repeatedly for decades, whether it was Republicans or Democrats from whom they were taking the country back. No matter who was put in charge, things didn’t get better. They won’t this time, either; spending levels may go down, taxes may go up, budgets will change, but American government will go on the way it has, not as a collective enterprise but as a battle between warring tribes.

If we are truly a democracy—if voters get to size up candidates for a public office and choose the one they want—why don’t the elections seem to change anything? Because we elect our leaders, and they then govern, in a system that makes cooperation almost impossible and incivility nearly inevitable, a system in which the campaign season never ends and the struggle for party advantage trumps all other considerations. When Democrat Nancy Pelosi became speaker of the House, the leader of the lawmaking branch of government, she said her priority was to … elect more Democrats. After Republican victories in 2010, the Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said his goal was to … prevent the Democratic president’s reelection. With the country at war and the economy in recession, our government leaders’ first thoughts have been of party advantage...."  (Read more from this archived article?  Click title)

"Unapologetically pursuing and tracking patterns within the news others make since 2010."

SandBox Comments: The Atlantic/Mickey Edwards "How to Turn Republicans and Democrats Into Americans"

"Angry and frustrated, American voters went to the polls in November 2010 to “take back” their country. Just as they had done in 2008. And 2006. And repeatedly for decades, whether it was Republicans or Democrats from whom they were taking the country back. No matter who was put in charge, things didn’t get better. They won’t this time, either; spending levels may go down, taxes may go up, budgets will change, but American government will go on the way it has, not as a collective enterprise but as a battle between warring tribes..."

(Mickey Edwards)

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"Truth goes through three stages. First it is ridiculed. Then violently opposed. Finally, it is accepted as self-evident."