“What’s the Holdup . . . ?”

. . . . was the question posed by CNN anchorwoman Erin Burnett yesterday on her TV show, Outfront. 

Erin Burnett of CNN challenges timing of Papal
Conclave.  (CNN TV Screenshot by Dick Bergeron.)

Burnett expressed concern about what she considers to be a delay in the beginning of the Conclave to elect a successor to Pope Benedict XVI who recently resigned.  She wants to be given a date specific – golly gee!

Ms. Burnett is a person who knows little or nothing about the Roman Catholic Papacy and the process of Papal succession.  Yet she demonstrated unabashed immaturity and a shortsighted willingness to put on display her bias and ignorance before an international TV audience.

“What’s the holdup?” she demanded, wanting to know why there is “no urgency in any way, shape or form.  “Why,” she continued petulantly [such a delay] “for one of the most powerful jobs on earth?”

The Executive who refused to Execute

President Obama addresses the press corps

 yesterday on sequestration.

(Fox News TV Screenshot by Dick Bergeron)

After a cursory gathering with leaders of Congress yesterday, President Barack Obama held a little publicized, yet dour press conference to report on the results of that meeting. 

House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and their lieutenants were invited to that get-together.

As anyone who is following this latest of beltway originated crises knows, that get-together yielded no progress on the now politically ubiquitous topic of sequestration.

It’s not even clear why the President called this meeting at the 11^th hour, on the last day possible to negotiate a solution.  Not he, his staff, nor anyone else in the leadership of Congress had the appetite to effect a compromise.

Washington Stare-Down Intensifies

President Barack Obama as he appeared on
"60 Minutes," January 27, 2013.

This afternoon, President Obama concluded his comments to shipyard workers in Virginia, spouting words of doom about what will happen beginning Friday, if the GOP does not come to terms about resolving the latest self-imposed budget crisis. 

The trigger for this presumed disaster is the ‘sequester,’ a failed political strategy which, at the 11^th hour, has become the straightjacket into which Obama and both branches of the Congress bound themselves in 2011.
Now they are in a cat fight over how to cut the binding.

Olympic Wrestling Pinned by the I.O.C.

Matt Schleckser (one of our grandchildren) is about to
win one of his matches in the Montgomery County,
MD finals for the Churchill High School Bulldogs.
(Credit:  All photos courtesy of Matt's mom,
 Denise Schleckser.)
 

On February 12, the International Olympic Committee voted to remove wrestling from the roster of summer Olympic Games, beginning with the XXXII Olympiad scheduled for 2020. 

That decision was reached secretly in Lausanne, Switzerland, by the 15-person board of the I.O.C. 

In a New York Times article, John Irving reports that “Just two of the board’s members come from countries where wrestling is an actively promoted sport.  Yet 180 countries wrestle.”

The Election You Probably Knew Little About

Bell tower and front entrance to the building
of fire district one in Martinsville.  To vote
here, follow the downward sloping driveway
to the right of the bell tower, and enter from
the back parking lot.  (Bergeron Image.)

Many times, Pris and I have intermittently gone out on a Saturday to cast our votes in the local fire district election.  In question is the budget for individual fire districts and their commissioners.

There has never been significant publicity about these elections.  Few people know that they even occur.  It is an event that simply is not promoted to the general public.

That is why, when I sat down this morning with a cup of coffee and the print edition of the Courier News, I was so very pleased to see two-thirds of the front page devoted entirely to “Fire District Elections [this] Saturday,”  large photo – the whole bit.

The explanatory article by Sergio Bichao of the Courier News is an excellent public service, is specifically informative, and its prominent position in the newspaper is evidence – thank goodness – that there is more to the news than merely sex and gore.