National Affairs - Required Reading

I'm intrigued by a new quarterly journal devoted to providing a thoughtful, challenging examination of our American experiment. National Affairs picks up where The Public Interest left off as a forum for intellectual essays discussing the the difficult realities of self-governance.

Having already consumed the free online portion of their innagural issue I find myself with no choice but to subscribe...

Grab Your Pitchforks and/or Torches

In light of the weeks staggering market losses here's a great picture which seems to accurately reflect the level of sympathy most Americans (and probably the rest of the world) feel for the good folks on Wall Street. Not that I'm a raging populist, but did go on record in opposition to the TARP(Bank Bailout program). I truly doubt the same folks whose greed and excess landed the world in this mess will somehow develop a new streak of benevolence with the aid of $700 billion, or $2 trillion, or however much we're going to give them, and fix our economy.

Here is a hilarious piece by the Daily Show ripping CNBC to shreds. I'm sure there was plenty of similarly enlightened and prophetic market commentary on the other cable financial news channels, but only CNBC happened to flagrantly attract Jon Stewart's attention. And I'm by no means endorsing a massive government bailout to reward peoples' poor mortgage decisions, but this video is a perfect example of just how out of touch the ivory tower types have become.

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

CNBC Gives Financial Advice

Daily Show Full Episodes
Important Things With Demetri Martin

Political Humor
Joke of the Day

Another David Brooks Bullseye

Moderation, Reason Anyone?

Great piece by David Brooks outlining the need for political moderates to assert themselves in the current economic/budget crisis by providing a reasoned middle ground that transcends the partisan warfare of the ideologues....

True Open Primary (and I didn't even have to vote for the budget)

SB 469 - True Open Primary

I was pleasantly suprised to have support from the vast majority of the Senate today to bring SB 469, which had been tabled in Committee, to the Senate Floor for a vote. This bill would present a ballot question to the voters of Montana allowing them to implement a truely open primary, more commonly known as a blanket primary. I regularly hear from constituents and voters across the state that they are very annoyed by having to choose to vote either a Republican or Democrat ticket in the primary. This would create a single ballot on which all candidates appear and voters could vote for any candidate from any Party in the primary. The candidate of each party with the greatest number of votes would then advance to the general election as they do now.

Montana does not register voters by Party...period. And each attempt, each session is soundly rejected. Montanans are fiercely independent and the vast majority do not want to be labeled by Party. The same holds true for voting patterns. Montanans are notorious ticket splitters and everyone I discuss the issue with staunchly defends the practice of voting the person, not the Party.

I hope the bill advances to the voters as I'm confident it will pass and the voters will wrest control of Primary elections from the hands of the Partys and the special interests that now exert undue influence on the process. The people deserve the right to support the candidate of their choice.

Welcome to the SenatorJohn Blog!

I'm excited to have this space to share some thoughts about Montana politics, National Politics and other aspects of our modern world from the perspective of a young, Progressive Republican.