stay classy
As noted earlier, in addition to menacing behavior toward multiple members of Congress, one protestor called Rep. Barney Frank a “faggot”, a taunt greeted by laughter from fellow protestors.
We’re now getting reports that other protestors yelled “nigger” at Rep. John Lewis (D-GA).
It’s good to see the bill debated on its merits.
Update: More.
Update: Still more.
quote out of context
If you get killed by a rock and you were carrying a gun, but didn’t shoot, you don’t get into heaven.
Rewriting History
The NYT piece on the Texas curriculum rewrite is chock-full of little treasures:
Dr. McLeroy, a dentist by training, pushed through a change to the teaching of the civil rights movement to ensure that students study the violent philosophy of the Black Panthers in addition to the nonviolent approach of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He also made sure that textbooks would mention the votes in Congress on civil rights legislation, which Republicans supported.
“Republicans need a little credit for that,” he said. “I think it’s going to surprise some students.”
Mr. [David] Bradley won approval for an amendment saying students should study “the unintended consequences” of the Great Society legislation, affirmative action and Title IX legislation. He also won approval for an amendment stressing that Germans and Italians as well as Japanese were interned in the United States during World War II, to counter the idea that the internment of Japanese was motivated by racism.
I assume there’s no required civics test for board members?
Who Needs History
AUSTIN – Republicans on the State Board of Education soundly rejected a Democratic-backed proposal Thursday that would have required Texas students to be taught the reasons behind the prohibition of a state religion in the Bill of Rights.
See the whole sad tale here.
Lessig on Conservatives
Incidentally, when I was sixteen, I was doing work for the New York Republican State Committee during the 1996 Republican National Convention. (hat tip to Luke)
Reconciling Reconciliation
Bill Frist, a former Senate majority leader, called reconciliation an “arcane” procedure that Congress has “never used … to adopt major, substantive policy change.” Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee asserted that this parliamentary tactic was unprecedented for a bill like health reform. Senator John McCain of Arizona said that the use of reconciliation would have “cataclysmic effects.”
So, would reconciliation represent an anomalous and dangerous power grab? The accompanying chart, which lists 15 major reconciliation bills passed by Congress since the process was first used in 1980, provides evidence for assessing that charge.
Reconciliation was intended to be a narrow procedure to bring revenues and spending into conformity with the levels set in the annual budget resolution. But it quickly became much more. The 22 reconciliation bills so far passed by Congress (three of which were vetoed by President Bill Clinton) have included all manner of budgetary and policy measures: deficit reductions and increases; social policy bills like welfare reform; major changes in Medicare and Medicaid; large tax cuts; and small adjustments in existing law.
(via)
Perplexing
As attorney general in 2006, McDonnell said Kaine exceeded his constitutional authority by extending protections to gays.
Palin 2012
(hat tip to Luke)
Talking politics
From my friend Jerry:
I read recently that the United States is more politically divided today than it has been at any time in it’s history since the civil war. I read that many friends and families can’t even sit down to a decent meal and have a civil discussion about the politics of the day without someone storming off before dessert.
Today via numerous outlets all of us can get our current views and prejudices reinforced daily by seeking out like minded media and conversation.
…
How about we all try a little listening. How about we all, just one time every day or so, engage someone who we know has a different perspective from ours and listen to what they have to say.
No seriously, really listen.
Oration
There are almost too many ideas floating around this article to summarize it adequately (Lloyd takes a pretty good stab at it). One of my favorites is the suggestion that great political orators are incapable of existing now because politicians give too many speechs:
The modern politician also has to make more speeches than ever before. It is “the tyranny of the diary”, according to Collins – where ministers will make hundreds of speeches a year, to conferences, pressure groups, openings of doctors’ surgeries. “The vast majority of these speeches are dates in the diary rather than things you’ve got to say. It’s no wonder speeches are boring if you’re doing that many. None of us has got novel things to say every week.” Lancaster agrees, remembering times working for Johnson when he’d be “churning out 10,000 words” a week. He sounded tired at the thought. “That’s not the best way to do it.”
Atkinson blames the media. He believes we are obsessed with personality, with “endless bloody interviews”. In his eyes, the devaluing of politics at the hands of journalists is encapsulated by the decline of the speech. Broadcasters, he suspects, have conspired against the form, convinced that it makes bad television. The media no longer have the time or interest to engage with the issues. Instead, they demand the soundbite, the personality and, best of all, the gaffe.
from the comments
Walt:
Having Nickelback perform at the Closing Ceremony may be the closest thing we Canadians ever get to knowing how you Americans felt being represented by Bush.
quote out of context
from a tea party email chain:
Then I got to the part that made me feel like my head was going to explode: “A protégé of the political imprisoned patriotic poet Ezra Pound, Mullins compiled a well-researched corpus of works…”
Er? (via The Hydra)
this unique 18-minute genre has its own requirements
From a Wired article on how to ace a TED Talk:
“I’m surprised to see that half the people here know my career in some detail and the other half don’t know who I am,” he says.
Science is fine, but not when it messes with our illusions.
If she had included solar power and African child warriors, it would have been so perfect a TED talk that there would have been no need for others.
Wolfram wraps his talk by saying that when it comes to trying to boil down the universe to a simple algorithm, “it’s almost embarrassing not to at least try.”
“Just because someone has an ego,” he says, citing a writer whose name I can’t read from my scribbled notes, “doesn’t mean he’s wrong.”
Thrashing around somewhere in a swamp of its own legislation
Mark Thomas takes on the Digital Economy Bill.
via @glinner
Which of these things does not belong?
GOOD has a nice little photo essay on the The Central Valley Tea Party.
quote out of context
How bad is it? It’s so bad that I miss Newt Gingrich.
Dear Chicago
Where do you find these people?
The Democratic nominee for Illinois lieutenant governor has dropped out of the race amid a political uproar about his past less than a week after he won the nomination.
The nominee, Scott Lee Cohen, announced his decision Sunday night at a Chicago bar.
Mr. Cohen, a pawn broker and owner of a cleaning supplies company, won the nomination Tuesday. Since then, it has become widely known that he was accused of abusing his former wife and holding a knife to the throat of a girlfriend.
Fiorina keeps it real in Cali race
Bat. Shit. Crazy. Be sure to hang around to 2:26 when shit gets weird.
“democracy’s next step”
hat tip to Gruber
Something Something Watergate
Remember those activists that “busted” Acorn and earned themselves a Roman Triumph on Fox & Friends? Well, they’re in jail now for breaking into a Senator’s office and the NYT has a nice little write up on their exploits:
[They were] fostered by a group of men and women in their late teens and early 20s with a taste for showmanship and a shared sense of political alienation — a sort of political reverse image of the left-wing Yippies of the 1960s. They studied leftist activism of years past as their prototype, looking to the tactics of Saul Alinsky, the Chicago community organizer who laid the framework for grass-roots activism in the ’60s, as well as those of gay rights and even Communist groups.
They held “affirmative action” bake sales with prices set based on the age and race of the buyer, posed as donors to Planned Parenthood seeking to contribute to the abortion of African-American fetuses only, and held a mock “Love Thy Prisoner” campaign to find American homes for Guantánamo inmates.
It’s hard not to feel like we’re all intentionally tipping left on the scale here, but I’m unsure what else to expect when the other side empties itself of all substance?
Seriously, I’m not sure how to respond to these folks anymore. Any suggestions?
The Budget
What I thought was a rather well-presented interactive info-graphic explaining Obama’s proposed budget.
(NYT)
John Edwards And The Morality Myth
Since I am playing the political game today, here is a great NPR piece.
Can Republicans Govern?
An obviously partisan article with some interesting and, occasionally, true insight about this country and The Narrative:
What if Republicans aimed at a different story altogether? What if the story of America were one in which government imposed ever less control over citizens? What if they considered every policy initiative through this lens: Does it help Americans become less, rather than more, dependent on the government? Their goal would then be to create—as best they can, and over time—a nation of self-reliant citizens, not merely “consumers” and “providers” and “practitioners” and “beneficiaries” and “recipients” and all the other less-than-fully-human descriptors of the left.
What if our national history were recast and understood in this new light? What if we reminded ourselves that it was the Republican party of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass that ended slavery and the Democratic party that dragged its feet? That it was the Republican party that pushed through women’s suffrage? That Republicans like Senator Everett Dirksen were leaders in the civil rights legislation of the 1960s? The overthrow of slavery, the enfranchisement of women, the end of segregation all empowered people vis à vis their government. And these advances in citizen empowerment were then wrongly put to the service of (seemingly well-intentioned) egalitarian programs that result not in the improvement of America’s citizenry but in their perpetual dependence?
If that were the tale told, then I would be comfortable calling myself Republican again.
Live video of Tony Blair giving evidence to the Iraq War Inquiry
Meet The Helpsters
Sweet! Our Mary came up with the gestating project they mention:
Once derided as hipsters, let’s call them helpsters. Instead of disaffected aesthetes with nihilistic tendencies, we see motivated and committed Samaritans. They fight overdevelopment, though it was their presence (and buying power) that drew the developers and realtors in the first place. They defend the rights of tenants, since landlords want to squeeze their diverse neighbors and artist friends out and move a new crop of more affluent—and inevitably less interesting—interlopers in. At the moment, efforts to increase community gardens, bike racks and green spaces are being discussed. Others organize meals for the poor and bike tours of toxic sites. One currently gestating project, to develop Brooklyn’s own currency, would make even old-school lefties blush.