2011 archive
Update from the Foreclosure-Based Economy 0
Maybe this has something to do with why Georgia leads the list in failed banks:
Blinders. Also, Gags. 0
Last night, I was at a function which turned out to have much smaller attendance than normal.
There were six of us, three white folks and three black folks, though mostly five persons were present at a time because persons came and went. So we had one of those lively interesting delightful conversations that cannot happen in a group of 15 to 20, the typical size of the gathering.
The conversation turned to the racism that floats freely in our society. Everyone had stories, some appalling, some quite nice.
The racism is there, all the time, everywhere (though not in everybody), lurking just under the surface of day-to-day life in America. You have only to open your eyes to see it.
Meanwhile, over at Balloon Juice, there seems to have been a kerfuffle about several somethings ABL posted. John Cole, the proprietor of the site, has stepped in regarding that, but what John Cole said could apply everywhere, not just at his own not-so-little blog.
As I have mentioned before, the reason we don’t “have a conversation about race” in America is because white folks don’t want to talk about it. Everyone else is willing to “have a conversation” (God, how I hate that overblown pretentious phrase!), but it would force white folks to face up to what white folks have done, so they ain’t talkin’.
So, what John Cole said.
On False Prophets 0
My friend called my attention to this. I had read about it, but it had not registered in my small mind.
Robertson, chairman of the Christian Broadcasting Network and former Republican presidential candidate, said he wouldn’t “put a guilt trip” on someone for divorcing a spouse with Alzheimer’s disease, calling Alzheimer’s itself “a kind of death.”
My mother suffers from advanced Alzheimer’s.
My father nourished her until he died, one month short of their 60th anniversary.
When I visit her, it is a gesture, for my mother is no longer present, except in a ghostly way. There is no one home in the house of her body.
Visiting her is something I do, sometimes reluctantly, because it is duty, for visits are painful and empty.
My father showed me through example that to do your duty is the highest calling–to do what you should do because it is right.
I consider myself Christian–one of those Christians who bases his beliefs and who tries to base his actions on the teachings of Jesus, not on the teachings of the Book of Leviticus.
Pat Robertson does not live in the world my father graced.
I do not want to live in Pat Robertson’s world.
Misdirection Plays, Reprise 0
The Republican fuss over social security has one goal and one goal only: Using the social security fund to fund Wall Street’s gambling ambition.
Everything else is smoke and mirrors.
Tricked by Trickle Down 0
Republican economic theory does exactly the opposite of what Republicans say it does.
Thom Hartmann explains:
Key quote:
You can’t build an economy and a nation if the only thing you are producing is derivatives.
QOTD 0
David Mamet:
Those who do not read have no advantage over those who cannot read.
Playboy, (vol. 51, no. 1) January 2004, p. 139.
And Now for Something Completely Different 0
Stoner Avenue:
Misdirection Plays 1
Responding to a particularly odious racist video (you will have to click through to view it–I suffered through about 30 seconds before being about to bear no more), Chauncey DeVega decodes the code:
- Republican “Small government”=”Southern Strategy.”
As is common with DeVega’s work, the post is long, tightly-reasoned, and amply supported with evidence.
Here are two nuggets (I couldn’t restrict myself to just one). The full post is here:
Ignoring for a moment Lee Atwater’s naked confession on the matter, rank and file former Reagan Democrats, suburban swing voters, and today’s Tea Party GOPers would bristle in defense at the suggestion that race or racism plays any role at all in their disdain for “big government.”
To Conservatives, such an argument is bizarre and strange: How could tax cuts and government rollbacks have anything at all to do with racism or racial resentment?
(snip)
Of course, the evidence suggests otherwise. The chants of “take our country back” beg the response “from who?” The narrative of “real America” plays on xenophobia towards non-whites, and a fear of how some type of Other is always at the gates, ready and willing to steal the hard earned just rewards of the (white) American middle class. Ultimately, in a previous year the fixation would have been on Reagan’s mythical welfare queens or nefarious “quotas” and “affirmative action” programs that deny white men job opportunities.
Most certainly, there are women (referring to the video–ed.) straight out of central casting who view food stamps and public assistance as a credit card of sorts and raise their children to believe that receiving support from the State is a “job” to be aspired to, a career to invest in. Likewise, they have twins in “respectable circles” who broke this country’s economy by advocating for irresponsible tax cuts for the very richest Americans, embracing robber baron capitalism, and gutted the American middle class through financial crookery.
Their crimes are different by orders of magnitude. That fact is irrelevant. Herein lies the rub: Colorblind Conservatism looks at the former with immediate suspicion and disdain, while the latter looks back in the mirror and is greeted with a smile.
In your heart, you know he’s right.
Handicapping Republican Presidential Possibilities 0
Mike Littwin looks at poll results (which are pretty meaningless this far out, but the create jobs for newsreaders), concluding that the seem favorable for the (dis)loyal opposition party.
Then he considers the field:
. . . It’s the Ken Buck/Christine O’Donnell strategy writ large. As I’ve mentioned before, Rick Perry is the Ken Buck that Michael Bennet wanted to run against.
Read the whole thing.
Free as in Beer Speech
0
I am pretty much a civil liberties absolutist. I avidly support the ACLU, both the organization and its mission.
Nevertheless, I find it difficult to see beer ads in college newspapers as a free speech issue. This seems to be not about speech, but to be a Trojan Horse for more beer ads, as if there were a shortage of them already.
The answer could determine whether the student newspapers at Virginia Tech and the University of Virginia, which claim a mostly adult readership, are subject to a state prohibition against liquor advertising in college newspapers.
A decision is likely by early November.
The narrow issue is a remnant of a 2006 lawsuit filed by Virginia Tech’s Collegiate Times and UVa’s Cavalier Daily challenging the decades-old ban. U.S. Magistrate Judge Hannah Lauck overturned it in 2008, ruling that it violated the papers’ constitutional rights to free speech.
That was reversed by a federal appeals court, which said the ban is narrowly tailored to serve the state’s interest in curbing underage drinking.
“An Armed Is a Polite Society” 0
Now Floridians can talk about politeness once more:
Judge Marcia G. Cooke said doctors had a First Amendment right to ask about firearms, and she rapped the state’s lawyers for failing to provide more than anecdotal evidence to show the law was needed.
“The State has attempted to inveigle this Court to cast this matter as a Second Amendment case,” Cooke wrote. “Despite the State’s insistence that the right to ‘keep arms’ is the primary constitutional right at issue in this litigation, a plain reading of the statute reveals that this law in no way affects such rights.”
Florida plans to appeal, because, after all, happiness is warm gun.
Nothing To Do, Nowhere To Go 0
Lay off more garbage collectors immediately so as to fix this:
The Labor Department says weekly applications rose by 11,000 to a seasonally adjusted 428,000.
The week included the Labor Day holiday. Applications typically drop during short work weeks. In this case, applications didn’t drop as much as the department expected, so the seasonally adjusted value rose. A Labor spokesman says the total wasn’t affected by Hurricane Irene.
Still, applications appear to be trending up. The four-week average, a less volatile measure, rose for the fourth straight week to 419,500.
After all, isn’t that how “austerity” works?
Meanwhile, up the road a piece.
The city’s (Philadephia–ed.) ability to help families without homes is getting weaker.
“The city is very blatantly turning away folks,” said Marsha Cohen, a lawyer for the Homeless Advocacy Project, which provides free legal help to individuals without homes. “It’s never been like this.”
Bushonomics has made homelessness a growth industry. Cities can’t supply the necessary infrastructure to support it.
Meanwhile, J. M. Ashby sums up the Republican position:
This would transform the bill into a self-fulfilling prophecy of a “second failed stimulus.”
. . . There is absolutely no element of good-faith at work on the conservative side of the aisle. They aren’t interested in your jobs. Only their jobs.
QOTD 0
Robert M. Pirsig, from the Quotemaster (subscribe here):
When people are fanatically dedicated to political or religious faiths or any other kind of dogmas or goals, it’s always because these dogmas or goals are in doubt.