No one will ever replace Ann Richards’ singular talent, but dang if Kentucky Senate candidate Alison Lundergan Grimes isn’t hearteningly reminiscent of her.
Vote in November, FFS.
The Cadences of Ann Richards
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Category Archives: Politics
Democrats and Tea Partiers Agree…
John Boehner is lying his ass off about impeachment being a fundraising scam perpetrated by Democrats.
What I’m wondering is, who actually believes his b.s.?
BOOM
From a response to a fundraising email from the College Republican National Committee, seeking to raise money for “recruitment supplies” including “items like CRNC sunglasses and drink coozies [sic] to spread the CRNC brand on campus”:
Here’s a marketing idea for you: in addition to the cool shades and koozies, give all those kids wallet-sized cards with pictures of conservative heroes like Dick Cheney, Steve King, Michelle Bachmann, Louie Gohmert, and Sarah Palin on the front. On the back, you can list everything the GOP has been right about in the last 40 years. You should be able to do that in large type. With plenty of white space. The use of “white” space should have a lot of appeal.
Why do I get the feeling that this guy’s email will show up in a future CRNC fundraising email as an example of the “persecution” faced by college-age conservatives who still get monthly checks from their parents?
What I’m Reading, August 7, 2014
Fox News Calls Ruth Bader Ginsburg an Ignorant Misandrist, Amanda Marcotte, Slate, August 1, 2014
Ginsburg’s comments inspired comical levels of umbrage-taking on The Five on Fox News, where Andrea Tantaros worked herself into full-blown “misandry!” mode. “Isn’t she sort of saying, ‘Keep men away from this court?’ ” she complained. “I get it. She’s a fan of birth control, but she is an enemy to the Bill of Rights.”
“Can you imagine if Justice Scalia would say the same thing about the women on the court, that they have a blind spot? In other words, they’re not reasonable?” Tantaros said. That is an interesting hypothetical, given that, in his majority opinion, Justice Samuel Alito specifically shut down the possibility that any other kind of health care would be affected by this ruling. He’s the one who singled out contraception as a lesser form of health care, not Ginsburg. But hey, maybe the court will soon rule on whether male-only health care counts as health care enough to be protected as health care, and Tantaros will see her theory put to the test. I’m sure that will happen any day now.
A Reminder: Texas Murdered An Almost Certainly Innocent Man, Scott Lemieux, Lawyers, Guns & Money, August 4, 2014
What I’m Reading, August 6, 2014
Ayn Rand’s libertarian “Groundhog Day”: Billionaire greed, deregulation and the myth that markets aren’t free enough, Thomas Frank, Salon, August 3, 2014
This summer will mark 13 years since the series of disclosures that led to the sudden bankruptcy of the Enron Corp. of Houston. The collapse of the gas-and-power leviathan, then one of the largest companies in the nation, was the starting gun for the modern age of neoliberal scandal, the corporate crime that set the pattern. It was not the first episode to feature grotesque bonuses for insiders, or a fawning press, or bought politicians, or average people being fleeced by scheming predators. But it was the first in recent memory to bring together all those elements in one glorious fireball of fraud.
This is the next Hobby Lobby, Irin Carmon, MSNBC, July 30, 2014
What I’m Reading, August 4, 2014
The Bullshit That Civilly Dare Not Speak Its Name, Batocchio, Vagabond Scholar, July 25, 2014
Civility does have value, but how it’s defined and actually observed (and enforced) can vary tremendously by community or venue. At its most basic, a civil discourse entails that each person gets his or her chance to speak without significant interruption and that needless personal attacks are avoided. A general ethic of cooperatively seeking the truth and exploring possible improvements to a given problem should also be in play. That said, among honest, sane, reasonably intelligent people, this standard is usually a given.
In contrast, in our national political discourse, the actual practice is that saying something that sounds harsh – even if it is factually, demonstrably true – is typically denounced as uncivil or otherwise rude, a breach of decorum. Newt Gingrich may be lying shamelessly, but the rules of the Beltway pundit game entail that calling him out as a liar is the true sin, not the lie itself. Rather than the hosts limiting the discourse to honest, sane, reasonably intelligent people (which necessitates qualitative judgment somewhere along the way), equal time – or rather, disproportionate time – is given to guests arguing in bad faith and/or with little to no expertise in the subject at hand. Consequently, civility as enforced usually does the audience a disservice.
How Big of a Problem is Harassment at Comic Conventions? Very Big. Janelle Asselin, Bitch Media, July 22, 2014
What I’m Reading, July 31, 2014
Conservatives Resort To Lying About Child Refugees’ Vaccination Rates To Justify Their Deportation, Omar Araiza, Burnt Orange Report, July 29, 2014
Conservatives are coming up with multiple kinds of excuses in order to deport the Central American child refugees, all while trying to hide their true prejudice against them. Case in point: “Our schools cannot handle this influx, we don’t even know what all diseases they have. Our health care systems can’t withstand this influx,” recently said U.S. Rep. Louie Gohmert, trying to make a healthy safety case for deportation and “war” against these children.
Sadly for conservatives, their excuses and lies simply don’t match up to the facts. In a horrible twist of irony, according to statistics by the United Nations, Central American children have a higher vaccination rate than U.S. children.
And whose fault is this? The very same conservative officials and voters in America raging war against vaccinations, and health insurance coverage. [Emphasis in original.]
Mississippi’s last abortion clinic to stay open — for now, Irin Carmon, MSNBC, July 29, 2014 (h/t Scott Lemieux)
What I’m Reading, July 30, 2014
Can We Just Be Honest, For Once? BooMan, Booman Tribune, July 28, 2014
I love how this country devises new ways to always avoid taking responsibility for its past mistakes. Did we torture people to death for no good reason? Oh well, we can’t admit it or our soldiers deployed overseas will be put at risk. This is why we never saw many of the more appalling photos from Abu Ghraib. It would have inflamed international opinion and made people want to kill our troops.
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[L]et’s stop being idiots and admit that people already are killing our people because of what we did and that the best way to assure that our people don’t do it again is to just be fucking honest, for once, about what was done in our name.
How Did the GOP Turn Into Such a Bunch of Clowns? Paul Waldman, The American Prospect, July 24, 2014
In a Way, I Sympathize with Rep. Gohmert
Once you’ve built a reputation for making batshit-crazy pronouncements to appeal to your batshit-crazy base, it must get more and more difficult to keep it going.
Texas Congressman Louie Gohmert (R-TX) suggested on Tuesday that the president of the United States was “extremely prejudiced” because he was deporting Mexicans, while allowing child refugees who were fleeing violence in Central America to stay.
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“I mean, holy smokes, this guy truly is fundamentally transforming America,” the Texas Republican opined. “But not into anything the Founders ever dreamed. These are people who are being given amnesty, who will eventually be able to vote if they’re not already, who have no idea what it takes to maintain a Republic if you can keep it, madam [sic].”
“And if you want to say, look at where these folks came from, we’ve got to give them amnesty, we’ve got to help them,” Gohmert continued. “Listen, there are are so many children around the world that are worse off than those in Central America, and how unfair is it to the Mexicans?”
To borrow a concept from the music industry, you have your entire life to come up with your first batshit-crazy pronouncement, but only a few days or weeks to come up with your second. Gohmert is so accomplished at this, he’s having to dig very deep indeed to find new material.
Unless, of course, Gohmert really is motivated by concern for the plight of undocumented Mexican immigrants, which is possible, but I have my doubts.
What I’m Reading, July 28, 2014
Paul Ryan’s “insult” strategy: Why his anti-poverty contract is so grotesque, Simon Maloy, Salon, July 24, 2014
The entire document is premised on the notion that the poor are poor largely because they lack sufficient incentive to improve their station in life. Blame for this is, of course, foisted upon the government programs themselves. “The biggest snag in the safety net is that it discourages work,” Ryan’s document observes. “Many federal programs are means-tested, so as families earn more money, they get less aid. Any system that concentrates on the most vulnerable will face this tension.”
If that’s “the biggest snag,” then the safety net is doing pretty well. Ryan and the GOP have been pushing this argument that government benefits breed complacency among their recipients for quite some time, but the evidence just isn’t there to back it up.
No One I Know Will Ever Be Arrested For Smoking Pot, Atrios, Eschaton, July 27, 2014 Continue reading