Monday, January 21, 2008
Links for the Day (1:06 pm)
1) Perlstein on conservatives and Martin Luther King, Jr.
2) Today’s Trib noted that Obama’s support among African-Americans has been growing since his win in Iowa, with 80 percent of blacks supporting him in Iowa. A couple days ago, former ITT editor Chris Lehmann had a pretty fiery Guardian piece explaining why. (Hint: The sickening race-baiting by Clinton surrogates might have something to do with it.)
3) Also a couple days ago, Henry Farrell had a fascinating post examining how inscrutability and ambiguous motivations can function as a source of strategic power. Henry writes:
If you never issue a direct order, instead allowing inferiors to infer your desires from what you don’t explicitly forbid, you make it extremely difficult for others to hold you accountable for what your inferiors end up doing. This is most likely what happened in Abu Ghraib and elsewhere. There likely never were any formal orders to torture and humiliate inmates – instead, there was a diffuse understanding, encouraged by those at the top of the hierarchy, that torture and humiliation were appropriate and acceptable tools of interrogation.
I believe the phrase is “read the whole thing.”
posted by Brian Cook | start the discussion
Friday, January 18, 2008
Mark Penn’s Got A Labor Problem (10:50 pm)
Mark Penn, pollster-buffoon extraordinaire and chief strategist for Hillary Clinton, claims that if Obama wins the Nevada caucus it will be illegitimate because a bunch of stupid unions organized for him. You want a prime example of the sort of politico that entrenched, establishment Dems consistently hire for millions of dollars to lose their campaigns for them just take a look at Penn. This guy is Hillary’s Shrum.
posted by Jarrett | 1 comment
2008: Year of the Union? (10:16 am)
According to the Wall Street Journal, labor is making a “big comeback” in the 2008 political races.
posted by Jarrett | 1 comment
Thursday, January 17, 2008
Huckabee Overtly Equates Homosexuality And Bestiality (12:31 pm)
TPM catches another Huckabee fringe-Christian-Right nutjob moment:
Huck, in elaborating on his views that the Constitution should be subjected to Biblical standards, had just wrapped up a discussion of the fact that marriage has meant “a man and a woman in a relationship for life.” With this context firmly established, this exchange followed:
QUESTIONER: Is it your goal to bring the Constitution into strict conformity with the Bible? Some people would consider that a kind of dangerous undertaking, particularly given the variety of biblical interpretations.
HUCKABEE: Well, I don’t think that’s a radical view to say we’re going to affirm marriage. I think the radical view is to say that we’re going to change the definition of marriage so that it can mean two men, two women, a man and three women, a man and a child, a man and animal. Again, once we change the definition, the door is open to change it again. I think the radical position is to make a change in what’s been historic.
That’s pretty clear cut. Changing the definition of marriage so it can mean “two men” or “two women” is equivalent to changing it to mean “a man and an animal.” No ambiguity here whatsoever.
All fascist movements begin with those in power defining the members of a minority group as aberrant or somehow less than human. Homosexuality’s usually a good target to get things rolling. So, my question: when will the mainstream media start reporting on the fact that this guy is a fringe extremist who believes some people are inherently less equal than others?
posted by Jarrett | 3 comments
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
Huckabee Wants the Constitution Amended (3:41 pm)
Just in case Huckabee’s bass-playing ever distracts you from his intentions to start tearing the whole place down once he’s elected President, Talking Points Memo has got this post up today:
Huck: We Need To Amend The Constitution, Bring It In Line With God
By Eric Kleefeld - January 15, 2008, 1:00PM
At a Michigan campaign event last night, Mike Huckabee gave an interesting reason for why he wants to amend the Constitution to ban both abortion and gay marriage: Otherwise, the Constitution would be in conflict with God.
Huckabee first observed that some of his opponents don’t want to amend the Constitution on both of these topics. “But I believe it’s a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living God,” Huckabee said. “And that’s what we need to do, is to amend the Constitution so it’s in God’s standards rather than try to change God’s standards.”
Huckabee’s platform: “I want to be president of the United States because it hasn’t been destroyed enough.”
Here’s the link to TPM’s post on the subject.
Can we afford another President who jettisons reason and logic because he listens instead to the magical word of “the living God?”
posted by Jarrett | 2 comments
Monday, January 14, 2008
The Wire in CJR (6:05 pm)
In anticipation of its final season, there has been a deluge of articles discussing The Wire (yes, the greatest TV show of all time), its iconoclastic creator David Simon, and his relationship with his former colleagues at the Baltimore Sun. While other articles have garnered more attention, I think this CJR cover story by Lawrence Lanahan provides the most through and balanced look at Simon’s personal vendetta for Carrol and Marimow and his take on the the role of journalism more broadly.
For Simon, this dispute basically comes down to the complexity of urban problems. As he sees it, the “Philly model,” imported to the Sun by Carroll and Marimow, ignored the decades of economic, racial, political, and social disconnects underlying that complexity. When it spurred reform, it was reform that could not match the intransigence of the underlying patterns. The reporting itself was formidable, Simon says, but to him, homelessness, addiction, and violence aren’t the central problems. “Those are all the symptoms of the problem,” he says. “You can carve off a symptom and talk about how bad drugs are, and you can blame the police department for fucking up the drug war, but that’s kind of like coming up to a house hit by a hurricane and making a lot of voluminous notes about the fact that some roof tiles are off.”
Of course, the new addition to Simon’s version of post-industrial Baltimore is the newsroom, which has some Wire fans concerned that Simon’s personal biases will make... read more
posted by Adam Doster | 1 comment
Radiohead Was Right (1:46 pm)
Record industry giant EMI has announced it will be cutting 1/3 of its work force. Many EMI recording artists and independent artists are decrying the move as a blatant attempt by the label to control the work of its artists from the top down. This is the label Radiohead stepped down from when it was acquired by private equity monster Terra Firma. Radiohead has since self-released a wondrous album, In Rainbows, on their website, offering it to fans for whatever price they want to pay. I paid $3 for it. Reports have it that the album has been downloaded 2 million times. Eat that, corporate music bloodsuckers.
posted by Jarrett | start the discussion
Thursday, January 10, 2008
Upholding Voter ID laws (8:39 am)
Who needs evidence in the nation’s highest court when you have hearsay?
“The chief justice also seemed unimpressed by the absence of known voter impersonators. ‘It’s a type of fraud that, because it’s fraud, it’s hard to detect,” he said to Mr. Smith.’”
Makes me sick.
posted by Adam Doster | 3 comments
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