Bernie Sanders may be angry at how the GOP is the Party of the Rich Fucking Over America... but Robert Byrd, who is dead, was in the Klan!
Seriously:
If he’s feeling nostalgic for an old-fashioned Democratic filibuster, maybe Bernie Sanders should read the transcript of Democrat/Klansman/Exalted Senatorial Cyclops Robert K. Byrd’s famous filibuster of the 1964 Civil Rights Act: 14 hours of Democratic rhetoric that deserve to live in infamy.
Of course, the Democrats lost. Somebody remind me of how that vote went down again?
Oh yeah: All but six Republicans in the Senate supported the Civil Rights Act, while about a third of Democrats — who held a large majority — voted against it, including the Klan recruiter who would remain the dean of Senate Democrats until his death in 2010.
Very clever.
And there might even be a point in there somewhere if Bernie Sanders were a Democrat.
Or if there were never such a thing as the Southern Strategy.
Oh no wait there wasn't and to this day that is why black people overwhelmingly see the Republican Party as their Heroes and Champions.
Ann Althouse on Maureen Dowd: narcissism wrapped in inanity, inside some bullshit. Let's quote!
"The caribou that waited too pliantly in the cross hairs is doomed to become stew for Palin and an allegory for politics."
"The elegant animal standing above the fray, dithering rather than charging at his foes or outmaneuvering them, is Obambi. Even with a rifle aimed at him, he’s trying to be the most reasonable mammal in the scene, mammalian bipartisan, and rise above what he sees as empty distinctions between the species so that we can all unite at a higher level of being."
That's Maureen Dowd. She's going there. Into the realm of violent metaphor, visualizing shooting the President. It's an amusing riff, but it's an image I would self-censor.
Yeah, well, whatever about Dowd: yes, shallow and creepy. And whatever about Althouse, as she is a Dowd manque, and that is, well, sad.
No, the real shuddering horror inhabits this phrase:
I would self-censor
!
There are things Ann Althouse thought of that she wouldn't say on the Internet?... Because they were what, too hateful?
Too self-absorbed?
Too crazy?
Good Lord. How extremely acatalectic: "What Even Ann Althouse Thought Would Make Her Come across as Demented."
These are deep regions of darkness black whose light-lack defies all sound sense and sober ratinocination. Great Crikes!
It looks like, just maybe, the teabagging Republicans may've shot themselves in the foot with their oh-so-clever tax deal with Obama. I suspect everybody who reads this blog has heard by now that there's a stealth assault on Social Security prominently featured in the deal. What's just now being discovered is the dog that didn't bark in the night -- what wasn't included in the deal. Turns out that's a not-at-all-surprising assault on state finances and government employee unions:
Congressional Republicans appear to be quietly but methodically executing a plan that would a) avoid a federal bailout of spendthrift states and b) cripple public employee unions by pushing cash-strapped states such as California and Illinois to declare bankruptcy. This may be the biggest political battle in Washington, my Capitol Hill sources tell me, of 2011.
This all has to do with a federal program --called BABS, set to expire on 12/31 -- that subsidizes the interest cost of state borrowings. Republicans wouldn't let Obama include it in the deal:
my Reuters colleagues report that a GOP congressional aide said Republicans “have a very firm line on BABS — we are not going to allow them to be included.”
What this means is that for the big states with the big projected budget deficits, those deficits just got measurably bigger. (There was an article in the Oakland Tribune on monday wondering why in the hell Jerry Brown wanted the damn job again.) The Republican assumption is that the only way to balance those budgets will be to take on the civil service unions -- in the hope that the crisis will get so bad the governors will kill the unions as dead as their hero Rayguns did to PATCO.
What they don't seem to have taken into account -- being Republicans and unable to think more than one step ahead of themselves -- is what this will do to the municipal bond markets. Kill them, basically. And that won't make Wall Street particularly happy. I suspect that having been apprised of this little oversight, Chuck Shumer, Joe Lieberman and Dianne Feinstein just became opponents of this deal.
And Wall Street in opposition, with any luck, may be enough to kill it.
I mourn the passing of Elizabeth Edwards. In a better world, I would have proudly voted for her: why wasn't she in charge? Though the same could have been said for many of the women of her generation, she was blessed with grace, class, and brains, and was in my humble opinion very beautiful. My mom wasn't all that much older than her when she died... I don't mean to denigrate EEs' accomplishments or choices, but it is rather to our collective loss that we have all been denied the full service and benisons of some very spectacular and caring people simply because of sexism.
Dennis Prager phones it in with about his zillionth explanation of how Rap Music and "MTV music videos" are Destroying American Youth. (The reference to "MTV music videos" is like a ring on the trunk of the stupid tree, an infallibly precise tell as to during exactly what decade Prager wrote the first draft of this shite. Oh well; as I've said before, I sort of admire people who get paid for not actually working, so bottoms up, Dennis.)
The best part is this:
The third nominee is an ode to New York City, "Empire State of Mind," performed by black rapper Jay-Z and Alicia Keys, and which also contains the N-word. It is worth recalling that when white radio-show host Laura Schlessinger used this word solely in order to condemn its use in inner-city black life, society's elite poured such wrath on her that it forced many of her sponsors to abandon her, and she decided to leave radio. But when Jay-Z uses it, he is rewarded with the nomination for the highest award in the music industry.
Dennis Prager: "Stupidy stupid-head Jay-Z gets to say 'nigger' and Laura can't. AND SHE WAS BEING NICE! UNFAIR." (Pouts, sulks, thrusts hands in pockets of short pants, kicks tin can despondently.) "Stoopid blacks n' liberals not letting us say 'nigger.' UNFAIR!"
Which made me wonder if perhaps black entertainers might be prevailed upon to allow white right-wing conservatives some sort of day-long amnesty once a year to spout the word "nigger" to their heart's content without fear of getting fired.
You know, convene a panel of, say, Jay-Z, Chris Rock, Wayne Brady, Flava-Flav, Wanda Sykes, let them pick a day (I don't know, like, just randomly, the third Monday in January) when Dr Laura & Prager & Beck & Limbaugh & Jonah & all the happy gang can just go nuts with the "nigger you crazy" and "nigger this" and "nigger that" for 24 whole glorious hours!
I mean, it seems pretty clear that deep down, they rather desperately want something like this.
Giving tham a day free of what they clearly perceive as the stifling, all-powerful censorship of white speech by black people would perhaps let them blow off some steam. And maybe this would promote racial harmony.
At the very least, though, it would likely promote racial clarity.
And if all goes well, Prager & his pals can also have vacations for "bitch" and "faggot"!
Sort of a general mea culpa; for some reason MollyI is having trouble posting. This is a purely tech issue that should be resolved soon. I mention it here only because Jill basically wrote the post that made the point that MollyI was trying hard to make this Sunday last, except her post got et.
I don't want quite to speak for MollyI, but since the wider debate has been (hoo-boy) broached, and she's now asleep, and other issues have arisen (you'll see), let us forge ahead.
What MollyI was interested in was the nature of the charges against Wikileak's Julian Assange. The point of the et post was not that Assange was GUILTY, nor that there isn't a reason to suspect that there may well be an ulterior political motive behind these charges being taken seriously NOW. (Really!) Moreover, there is a lot that is not known about the specific cases -- but leave that aside for the moment.
Her annoyance was simply that the women who had brought the charges forward were getting shat upon by all quarters, right, left, and otherwise, and this bugged her.
Jill has the basic points covered; extraction from her overall argument is difficult, but this is the substance:
Whether withdrawal of consent is what actually happened here is impossible to tell, so I’m not suggesting that Assange is a rapist or that these charges are 100% definitely on-point; I have no idea. But neither do the commentators who are saying that Assange did nothing more than have sex without a condom. And it’s important to counter the “haha sex by surprise those crazy Swedes” media narrative with the fact that actually, non-consensual sex is assault and should be recognized as such by law. Consenting to one kind of sexual act doesn’t mean that you consent to anything else your partner wants to do; if it’s agreed that the only kind of sex we’re having is with a condom, then it does remove an element of consent to have sex without a condom with only one partner’s knowledge. To use another example, if you and your partner agree that you can penetrate her, it doesn’t necessarily follow that she has the green light to penetrate you whenever and however.
Why this is crazy feminist extremism exceeds me.
Isn't it on a basic level just, well, manners, to tread very carefully around issues of consent?
And also, ahem, isn't (STRONG AHEM) talking through the terms of the sexual encounter (AHEM) ahead of time, you know, not a lot of... incredible fun?
Like, the most fun humans can ever possibly have together, short of the, er, fun part?
TOP GROWNUP HUMAN FUN! (1) Having sex when you're both into it; (2)Talking about sex when you're both into it. (Number 3 personally would be "our kids go to sleep at 7:30PM," but it's all tied together....)
But these are ancillary observations -- that consent should be the decent, humane, civilized standard; and that grownup men and women who understand this are likely to be kind of happy.
Getting back to the Assange case.
The issue of consent is really what matters. Individuals have rights. Either you believe this, or you don't. And perhaps the most fundamental of these rights is the right to not be coerced into a sexual act without consent.
Having already said that the proper response to Julian Assange can be summarized in four words — Predator drone. Hellfire missile. — I certainly have no interest in defending that disgusting scumbag.
Him say boom. BOOM! Him smart-witty.
But I think many people who look at life from a practical, common-sense perspective will react to Jill’s fine scruples about the process of ensuring mutual consent much like I did: Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?
Him say military thing in italics. Him witty. Him must have testicles!
In an era when some 40% of U.S. births are to unmarried women, in a culture where “Girls Gone Wild” and “hook-ups” are normative, where threesomes, bisexual experimentation and amateur video-porn orgies have become a virtual rite of passage for many young Americans, where chlamydia and herpes are pandemic — in this era of rampant sexual decadence, I say, does Jill Filipovic (J.D., NYU) seriously expect horny strangers to negotiate consent calmly on an act-by-act basis while they’re knocking boots, making the beast with two backs, in flagrante delicto?
Listen up, sweetheart: You buy the ticket, you take the ride.
This is very clever. Essentially -- and you can work out the asshole algebra if you want to especially -- this equates to "whatever he did or didn't do to that Scandanavian whore is cool because of 'Girls Gone Wild.'"
McCain's furious refusal to make any sort of logical or moral sense here is pretty much all you need to know about the hideous abysm of patriarchal screeching once it's been caught out puling.
Enjoy also how he employs cod-slang ("nookie," "got game," "played") so as to dress up the antique as cutting edge. Bourdieu's point about how rhetorical censorship is most comically employed when it is done so out of frantic social insecurity applies: there is no more ancient ideology of domination than masculine privilige-mongering, and also none more precariously tottering nowadays, thanks to centuries of feminism.
Which means there's always a market niche for some douchebag with a dab hand at cliche-flinging.
That they're reduced to John Stacy McCain in this regard is, well... telling. Maybe recycled St. Jerome gags are not precisely what the 21st century wants from its standup acts.
Meanwhile there is always also a real live human woman getting date raped.
Again, I don't know all the facts of the specific Assange case, and this is altogether separate from the Wikileaks things in general -- spread the leaks!
But you can tell a lot about who someone really is and what they really care about once you see if they truly take seriously issues like someone else's right to decide what happens to their own body.
Given the deep-seated ideological commitment of the conservative wing of the Supreme Court to the Hallowed Doctrine of States' Rights, there is no possible way this case could ever come out otherwise than a ringing endorsement of the right of states (& even better, localities) (albeit ones, er, largely run by Democrats) to impose stricter regulations on carbon emissions than those set down by the federal government!
The Supreme Court agreed Monday to decide whether eight states and other plaintiffs can proceed with lawsuits that seek to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions by utilities.
The lawsuit is part of a push by some states for "greenhouse gas" regulations that go further than efforts by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The agency started to develop greenhouse-gas standards after the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in 2007 that the EPA has the authority to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act.
This case, which dates back to 2004, asks whether states and other plaintiffs can use federal public-nuisance law to seek court-imposed limits on the emissions, called greenhouse gases because they trap heat in the earth's atmosphere.
Granted, I am not an adept in the full legal arcana, nor the Byzantium that is the current SC, so maybe there is a reason I might be enlightened as to why I should not suspect that what's going on here is the wingnut-wing of the SC wanting to shoot in the face states wanting to regulate carbon emissions.
But then, if Sam Alito's gig isn't to make Glenn Beck-class lunacy look Solemn and August, I'm frickin' Batman, and I'm not.
I also suspect that one of the deeper issues here is whether or not CO2 is going to be recognized by Teh Courts as a pollutant. I eagerly anticipate learning exactly how Roberts et. al. are going to weasel out of the science. My bet would be on a clever dodge-finesse of the basic point, given that the science really is clear -- you know, something that basically punts to Inhofe and his Uruk-Hai regaining Science Power in the Senate.
Maybe someday the Jews in America will wake up to the absolute hatred and hostility the left has for the State of Israel. This is just disgusting.
Israeli firefighters watch a devastating fire in the city of Kyriat Karmel, Carmel Forest, near Israel’s northern city of Haifa. 41 people have died in the fires. (AFP)
A leading leftist website is urging liberals not to donate to Israeal’s fire relief fund… Because Israel is a “rich” country. The Atlantic today is urging liberals to turn their back on Israel:
Inevitably, the Jewish National Fund, which, among other things, plants forests in Israel, is asking for donations from Americans for its “Forest Fire Emergency Campaign,” in response to the massive fire spreading across the Carmel mountains. But I’m not giving.
Israel’s per capita GDP is nearly $30,000. Israel is a rich country. The fact that it doesn’t possess adequate firefighting equipment is its own fault. The fact that the leadership of its fire service is incompetent is its own fault (you can read more about that here). At some point, the good-hearted Diaspora Jews who still think of Israel as a charity case are going to have to tell their cousins to learn to fully-fund basic services like firefighting if they want to be thought of as citizens of an advanced country.
How awful. By the way… The fires this week that killed 41 people were set by “Arab” youths. It wasn’t the only fire. Israel is battling against a wave of arson attacks set by “Arab” citizens. Israel is under terrorist attack and the left is urging liberals to withhold support. Unbelievable.
So, to sum up:
Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic -- a leading leftist website -- has absolute hatred AND hostility for the state of Israel and wishes to allow Arab youths to set fire to it, and American Jews need to Wake Up to These Facts.
Outreach of this caliber by geniuses like Jim Hoft explains why the GOP has such a stranglehold on the Jewish Vote. It is the intimately cherished, hard-won expertise of a distant land, you see, sensitively and deftly employed with surgical precision & skill.
The punchline, of course, is that on the American right Jim Hoft is probably more influential on matters relating to Israel than Jeffrey Goldberg is. Hoft's Israel is anyway far more the American Right's Israel than Goldberg's is.
Of course, the reason the Soviets could get away with this shit was that they had nuclear weapons. What does the GOP have as an equivalent...?
Why, a horribly high unemployment rate.
And what is the reason for the horribly high unemployment rate?
Why, GOP dogma as to non-regulation and non-government spending except on the military and rich people.
And what is the reason for the continance of the horribly high unemployment rate under a Democratic legislature and executive?
Why, a refusal to confront GOP dogma as to non-regulation and non-government spending except on the military and rich people.
And what reason is there to believe anyone likely to occupy higher federal political office in the next decade or so is ever going to do what needs to be done to confront high unemployment?
Why, no reason.
So we're fucked forever?
Why, yes.
And also we won't deal with climate change?
Why, hahahahaha.
And why are we the World's Greatest Nation Again?
Why, we're the ones who get to push down the handle as we flush humanity into the shitter.
Christianity Today recently documented the fact that America’s churches are not only “failing to attract younger worshipers,” but they are also “not holding on to the ones” raised in the church. Research studies indicate that “70 percent of young people leave the church by age 22” and that figure “increases to 80 percent by age 30.” The American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS) revealed that the “percentage of Americans claiming ‘no religion’ almost doubled in about two decades” (8.1 percent in 1990 and 15 percent in 2008). Among the young (18 to 29 years old) the number doubled (11 percent in 1990 to 22 percent in 2008), with 73 percent coming from religious homes and 66 percent describing themselves as “de-converts.” Consequently, according to the Southern Baptist Convention (America’s largest Protestant denomination), church growth is not keeping up with the birth rate.
So?
Oh wait:
In his Weekly Standard review of Robert D. Putnam and David E. Campbell’s “American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us,” Joseph Bottum finds that the “massive increase” — from five percent to 25 percent — of those with “no religion” is because of a “fear of religion’s apparent lack of tolerance.” In Bottum’s view, Putnam and Campbell see the source of intolerance as sex: “[T]he percentage of Americans who held that premarital sex was not wrong leapt from 24 percent to 47 percent” in the early 70s and “has continued upward ever since.” Indeed, the divisiveness of “libertines and prudes” fighting over sexual morality is what prevents the Putnam and Campbell ideal of a “gentle, get-along religion” that would attract and keep young people in the fold.
Actually, as Bottum points out, “America needs its believers to believe something …” and the lack of deeply held beliefs is behind the drop in church membership.
"Hey I like sex" v. "ugh, sex!" I'm only surprised the point spread was the bet it was for so long.
You want to be exemplars ofJesus? Fine. Build houses for poor people. You want to show charity? Collect food. Do material good. Feed the poor, work to give poor kids a chance.
