T-Mac: #Komenfail
Articleman as Particleman: The Science of Newt/RINOs
Newt Sees Shadow, Crawls Back Into Hole: Six More Weeks of Primaries On Way
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T-Mac: #Komenfail Articleman as Particleman: The Science of Newt/RINOs Newt Sees Shadow, Crawls Back Into Hole: Six More Weeks of Primaries On Way |
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There's been a lot of punditty chatter about what the Romney vs. Gingrich struggles means: insiders vs. outsiders, establishment vs. Tea Party, elite vs. non-elite, whatever. But listening to that clip of Gingrich attacking John King, listening the open, undiluted pleasure that Gingrich takes in his own rage, made it clear to me what this is really about. The Republican primary voters are electing their political family a new Drunk Dad. And they want to be sure they get the right kind.
So, Newt Gingrich is getting all kinds of media love after blasting the media in Thursday's debate, and saying that he's "tired of the elite media protecting Barack Obama by attacking Republicans," for example by reporting on things that Republicans running for President have actually said and done. I mean, the "elite media" hasn't fact-checked anything Barack Obama has said in a Presidential debate since before he was elected! How can that be fair?
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Zandar, at Balloon Juice, points out that Missouri's new Creationism-in-the-schools bill, HB 1227, applies not only to K-12 schools but to the state's public colleges and universities as well. According to the bill, [Read more]
So, Mitt Romney won the New Hampshire primary last night with 39% of the vote. The media is counting it as a big win, which is fair enough. 39% is a perfectly good win in New Hampshire, and very much in line with what many past winners have received. But there are two things that should worry the Mittster.
1) Voter turnout was basically flat from 2008, even though there wasn't a contested Democratic primary this time.
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The obvious stories from the Iowa caucuses are that 1) Mitt Romney ended up tied with the long-long-long-shot Rick Santorum, with Ron Paul hot on their heels and 2) Romney still has exactly the same crappy vote totals he had four years ago. But there's an even more important story: the Republican turnout was pretty much exactly what it was four years ago, when the Republican electorate was depressed and demoralized. In fact, when you factor out the independents and caucus-night party-switchers, fewer Republicans showed up to vote last night than in 2008, when their enthusiasm was at its lowest ebb.
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Happy New Year, all. My spouse and I spent part of yesterday evening at our local revival house, watching a classic New Year's Eve double-feature of The Thin Man and After the Thin Man. Then we adjourned to a favorite bar for midnight; after all, that's what Nick and Nora would do.
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Mitt Romney used to be Governor of Massachusetts, a commonwealth which has at various times been A) the closest thing to a theocracy America has ever had and B) the poster child for tolerant secular liberalism. Many vocal religious conservatives now insist that the tolerant secular liberalism is an infringement on their religious liberty, and that they can only fully exercise their religion when the state actively endorses and promotes their religious values for them. [Read more]
Last night, thanks to Annie Laurie from Balloon Juice, I finally understood what the Republicans are about to do to themselves.
I've been thinking of primary voters choosing whether to run Mitt Romney or to run an undisciplined crazy person.
Of course, they will end up running Mitt Romney and an undisciplined crazy person. Of course they will. They're just working out which one.
Now I don't feel well.
It's Christmas time, which means "War on Christmas" time, which means a whole bunch of bizarre complaints about persecution by members of an overwhelmingly privileged religious majority group. This bad behavior is often understood as part of the most intense and fire-breathing American Christianists' fire-breathing intensity. But that's only half the story, or maybe less. [Read more]
Hey there, conservatives. I know a bunch of you have had a good ride bashing on gays in the military for most of the last twenty years. (If you're a conservative who hasn't, good for you. You can ignore the following advice, with my hearty compliments.) And I know those of you who've been doing the public hating also hate to give up a good thing. Now that gays are openly serving in the military, I understand that it feels like time to double down. The issue's always been a winner for you before. Why wouldn't it be a winner now?
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Twenty years ago I got my first teaching job, as one of two young English teachers hired by a little high school in greater Boston. The other new teacher was a guy named Kevin Hogan. Kevin was already a much better teacher than I was, assured while I was struggling, deft where I was stumbling, natural in the classroom in a way I wouldn't be until years later. The kids loved him. I liked and admired him. I certainly didn't feel any shame in being the second-best rookie English teacher in the building (and I was a very distant second); I was just figuring things out, and Kevin was obviously and enormously talented.
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Dear Authorities:
I would like very much not to have a revolution. I know that you don't want one either. I prefer my change peaceful and democratic. You, I suspect, prefer any changes to be strictly top-down, decided upon by the existing power structure. But neither of us want lawless, spasmodic change. So please take my advice: leave the protestors the hell alone.
I know like the Occupy Protests seem like too much to you, that they're going on too long and spreading too far. There is a reason that you think this. You are completely out of your minds. You have lost all sense of perspective.
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Hello, GOP primary voters. I know you're feeling upset about the new and graphic charges against Herman Cain. And I know that many of you blame white liberals, like myself, for allegedly drumming up these allegations to keep Cain from winning your nomination. But let me say on behalf of my fellow honky pinkos that this one really, really wasn't us. Because, you see, we would love for Herman Cain to win your nomination. Oh please, please, please vote for him anyway. There's no one we'd rather see run against Barack Obama in the fall. We're willing to beg here. [Read more]
Last weekend, Hollywood released Anonymous, a costume drama whose promotional materials ask "Was Shakespeare a Fraud?" They're not really asking the question; the movie clearly promotes the argument that it was "really" Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, who wrote the plays. The studio has also sent out course materials to schools, so that teachers can teach students to think critically about embrace the idea that Oxford wrote Shakespeare.
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It's become disturbingly clear that the people occupying Wall Street, and the centers of several other major American cities, have no plan for the future. No vision. No coherent ideas. No sense at all of what to do next.
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I recently changed cellphones, for only the second time in my life. I held onto my first cellphone for five dented, dinged and battered years, and did not replace it until it vanished on me entirely -- possibly because it had at long last dissolved into its constituent atoms -- while I was traveling.
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After I suggested being honest about college sports on this blog page, Taylor Branch has made the same case, better, in The Atlantic. With, you know, actual reporting and everything.
Here's a bit from Branch's lead, as a shoe-advertising king pin talks openly about "buying your schools" in order to increase his market share:
Not all the members could hide their scorn for the “sneaker pimp” of schoolyard hustle, who boasted of writing checks for millions to everybody in higher education. [Read more]
It's strange to be cajoled, everywhere you turn, to "remember" September 11. It's not like we've forgotten it. Who needs a reminder of this? It's like being told "Remember gravity!"or "Remember oxygen!" I am reminded every day, thanks. It's all around us.
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I spent a lot of the summer driving U-Haul trucks instead of blogging, so I didn't keep up with the early Republican jostling. Tonight, I'm going to do something useful with my time, so watching the Republican debate is out of the question. But the New York Times published a great piece about the Republican's political situation three months back. It simply didn't use the words "republican" or politics. It was a piece about movie studios and Comic Con.
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It's college football season, and that means corruption and scandal. (Margaret Soltan at University Diaries blogs superbly and tirelessly about that corruption.) We've actually gotten to the point where Sports Illustrated, not the Chronicle of Higher Education but Sports Illustrated, has called for a major university football team to be disbanded. But the moral conversation about college sports remains so focused on abstractions like tradition and idealism that the "moral" conversation itself is corrupt, and corrupting. Arguing about ideals is fine. Mistreating actual human beings in the service of your ideals is depraved. [Read more]
Huffington Post - A. Terkel/R. Grim begins report with:
WASHINGTON -- At a private three-day retreat in California last weekend, conservative billionaires Charles and David Koch and about 250 to 300 other individuals pledged approximately $100 million to defeat President Obama in the 2012 elections.
and report includes:
The source told The Huffington Post that they lamented the direction the conference has taken over the years. They said it used to be about "conservative strategy" and building a movement, but now it was mostly an "alpha male" spectacle focused on fundraising to beat Obama.
This is downright frightening.
If I could offer advice to a young rebel, it would be to rummage the past for a body of thought that helps you understand and address the shortcomings you see. Give yourself a label.
Effective rebellion isn’t just expressing your personal feelings. It means replacing one set of authorities and institutions with a better set of authorities and institutions. Authorities and institutions don’t repress the passions of the heart, the way some young people now suppose. They give them focus and a means to turn passion into change.
As if the socio-political change is a matter of removing one set and plugging in the other set.
In the end, all Brooks once wants to do is point to the kids of today and say "aren't they being silly."
What Brooks wants to avoid is the messiness that comes from delving into the change where the outcome is not known before one set out ahead of time. It wraps this up by saying those who see it in a different way are merely motivated by personal feelings, which is about as asinine as it gets.
As they say, you read, you decide. Preview:
They'll still turn down Planned Parenthood again next time because of the supposed pass-through grant. Unless of course, Nancy Brinker was lying last night. So which is it?
“This represents nothing new. We have known and have reported that they are continuing five grants through 2012. This is a reference to that. The second clause about eligibility is certainly true. Any group can apply for anything. It does not mean they are going to get anything,” Ruse told LifeNews.
Geez, is the 'surrender' a trojan horse? Or in fact, not even a surrender, since ongoing current funding was not being stopped. According to this, it's all about the future funding processes, which is still not committed. Hmmm.
Once again, as ever, this bill (as many legislative actions) provides only the facade that our Nation's leaders are legislating what the country needs and holding themselves to the same standards as their constituents.
In truth, the proposed legislation does not provide the same oversight and consequences for Congressional insider trading malfeasance, as the rest of our nation's citizens are subject to under current insider trading laws.
We need to stand up and speak out that this is not good enough! Please, blog - send emails - call - communicate the facts to the WH, media and your own local governmental body, asking them to pass a resolution to be forwarded to your state's congressional members as well as the WH. Don't attack either party as all are culpable. A bi-partisan coalition none should support.
Well it took longer than I thought, but just a day longer. KOMEN has reversed course.
We want to apologize to the American public for recent decisions that cast doubt upon our commitment to our mission of saving women’s lives.
Nancy Komen Brinker goes on to deny what happened and continues to say they were misunderstood, but the backlash has been enormous, and they have reversed course and apologize.
The thing is, I think this will continue to hurt them, as they've been found out, they support policies that that hurt women.
Yep, sorry Nancy, your days in the spotlight are probably over.
I will update this with some video soon.