First Looks category archive

Details here. A couple of days old, but still relevant.

Dick Polman (emphasis added):

Late yesterday (he wrote this Thursday–ed.), New Hampshire legalized gay marriage. This development didn’t get big play online or in print, mainly because we’ve already reached the point where it’s no longer deemed big news when a new state stands up for equal rights.

New Hampshire became the sixth state to legalize gay marriage, but we should at least pause to note the significance of this news. New Hampshire is a former Republican bastion – or, as we used to say a generation ago, “a rock-ribbed” Republican bastion – that has now become a swing state dominated by its burgeoning population of independent voters. Increasingly, New Hampshire’s elected leaders act in ways that mirror the mood of those independent voters.

Like I said, “Done deal.”

DougJ asks for readers to explain to him the conservative view of the Renaissance.

I was wondering…what is the official conservative take on the Renaissance? I know what it is for most of the rest of history. Greeks—good, despite the teh gay stuff. Middle ages—good, people spoke Latin and obeyed the church. Age of Enlightenment—bad, too much questioning of authority plus everyone was French. Modernity—bad, too much atheism and abstract art. My gut feeling is that the Renaissance was bad. It ended the Middle Ages, which were good, it led to the atheist doctrine of heliocentrism, which is bad, and God touching the hand of man and all that seems like proto-secular humanism, at best.

Follow the link. Read the responses.

Thunderstorms and power failures during the night.

Every digital clock is flashing at me.

Fanaticism is a frightening thing, for it clothes itself in righteousness.

And, armed, it is even more frightening.

Tony LaRussa sues Twitter.

From ESPN:

The lawsuit claims that someone created a false account under La Russa’s name and posted updates, known as “tweets,” that gave the false impression that the comments came from La Russa. The suit said the comments were “derogatory and demeaning” and damaged La Russa’s trademark rights.

The account bearing La Russa’s name is no longer active. The lawsuit includes a screen shot of three tweets. One posted on April 19 said: “Lost 2 out of 3, but we made it out of Chicago without one drunk driving incident or dead pitcher.”

From Kiko’s House:

Microsoft founder Bill Gates, who knows a thing or two about personal wealth, once said that Republicans are about supporting efforts to generate it while Democrats are about finding ways to share it.

That, it seems to me, is a central contradiction of today’s GOP, and while it might have been a winning formula during the Reagan Revolution, that political movement was never what it was cracked up to be and has long had a stake through its heart despite the frequent evocation of the Gipper by party elders longing for the good old days. In other words, winning elections.

I would take things a step or two further than Gates and suggest that today’s GOP is not just about generating personal wealth, but about keeping it from anyone who does not march to its own beat. These include a strangled middle class, people who lack the resources to get well when they fall ill, and that rising immigrant class, many of them illegals.

The nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court has revealed the Republican Party at its most crass, hypocritical and vulnerable.

Second Son turned 21 today.

I expect his friends will pour him through the door sometime this evening.

Read more »

Boat runs.

Read more »

Via the Coyote’s Byte.

Not.

John Cole on rage with guns.

I will add that this act, though some would describe it as “terrorist,” doesn’t seem to have been done with any political goal in mind and, baring additional information, fails the definition of “terrorism.”

Hold the pickle, hold the lettuce,

Scientific facts don’t upset us . . . .

Without approval of the parent company, a franchisee has it his own way:

Would you like a side order of climate denial with your flame-broiled Triple Whopper? If so, then you need to get yourself over to Tennessee where a number of Burger King franchises in the US state that gave us Al Gore have been displaying “Global Warming is Baloney” signs outside their fast-food restaurants.

(snip)

Memphis Flyer readers have been contacting the paper since the story first appeared to say that they have noticed other restaurants across Tennessee displaying the same sign. It appears that they are all owned by a company called the Mirabile Investment Corporation (MIC) that owns more than 40 Burger Kings across Tennessee, Arkansas and Mississippi, as well as a handful of Popeyes and All In One franchises.

Track them from 1880 to the present at the New York Times’s Interactive Immigration Explorer.

Here.

TVGuide dot com tells me that the Da Vinci Code is already on cable telly vision.

I tried to watch it once on On Demand and didn’t last 30 minutes.

Toxic Avenger was a better movie (warning, enough nudity that when Second Son walked in, he stayed for 15 minutes).

Indeed, Toxic had a better hairstyle than Tom Han–oh, never mind.

Tuesday, Triumph Brewing Company, 2nd and Chestnut, Philadelphia, Pa., 6 p.

Plenty of parking on Front.

Come discuss how rightwingers baspheme by committing murders in churches. (There is, of course, nothing new about that.)

Fair warning: I’m back from Virginia Beach and intend to be there.