Month: August 2009

Quote For The Day III

“The Government’s failure to answer growing questions about torture and rendition are damaging the good name of this country," – William Hague, shadow foreign secretary for the Tories in Britain.

There are growing calls for a commission to investigate Britain's complicity in the vast torture program set up as the Bush administration's primary weapon in the war on Jihadist terror. William, a rock-ribbed conservative, has written a biography of William Wilberforce. He gets it, as all true conservatives should.

Yglesias Award Nominee

"This restriction might make sense if needle-exchange programs increased the number of addicts. But they don't. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health, has comprehensively reviewed the scientific studies on needle exchange. "It does not," he says, "result in an increase in drug abuse, and it does decrease the incidence of HIV. . . . The idea that kids are going to walk out of school and start using drugs because clean needles are available is ridiculous." My experience in Washington was consistent with Fauci's view. Addicts who came for needles were generally in their 40s and 50s. The availability of clean needles no more caused their addiction than the provision of clean shot glasses would cause alcoholism," – Michael Gerson, defending a policy the administration he worked for for eight years abhorred.

The View From Their Recession

Christina Davidson traveled to a National Guard armory in Kansas City, KS, that distributed 3,800 backpacks filled with school supplies to needy children in the area:

"I don't know what's inside, but it's heavy," Deonte Johnson tells me, as he holds onto the straps and spins around in circle. "Maybe it's gold! It's so, so, so heavy I think I might fall over!" With that, a grinning Deonte feigned collapse, pulled by the imaginary weight of a backpack filled with gold. […] Backpack2

Back in February, Cheryl Johnson, single mother of 7-year-old Deonte, was laid off from her managerial position at a hotel in Overland Park, Kansas. She began working for the same hotel again one month ago, though this time in housekeeping, a job that earns only minimum wage. This is her first year attending the Back-to-School fair. Without it, she is not sure how she would have paid for school supplies. "We already eat ramen for most meals. Deonte is wearing his cousin's old clothes. I priced everything the school said he would need and it came to $32. At Wal-Mart! I know that don't sound like much, but it's $32 more than we have right now."

"Life's hard. Everything so hard right now," Cheryl says, her smile fading, voice trembling. "I never had a chance for real education in my life. I will sacrifice anything to see Deonte gets more opportunity than I did. But right now I got nothing left to sacrifice."

A City Of Flirts

In a paean to Dupont Circle, Eve Tushnet draws a contrast between urban and rural relationships:

I’m told that country life teaches you patience and charity, since you can’t get away from your neighbors or your past. […] The city teaches you patience and charity in a different way: You learn to negotiate among strangers. Every region has a different way of managing it—pop culture tells me that Midwesterners smile relentlessly, Southerners drink and fight, and Californians drive. D.C. flirts. If you don’t interpret strangers’ actions with charity and good humor, you’ll go crazy here.

Tushnet also praises urban life as the “human condition with the volume on high." Larison sees it differently:

[T]he city nonetheless remains a kind of place relatively more hostile to moderation and virtue, and it will always be the kind of place prone to an exaggeration of all those desires that man needs to keep in check if he is to remain civilized rather than merely urbanized. In the meantime, the economic and political consolidation and concentration of power that our major cities embody are real dangers that threaten the urban professional and the farmer alike.

Sue From Your Recession, Ctd

A reader writes:

This is how litigation urban myths—like the McDonald’s hot coffee case—spawn. In the desire to spice up a story, the actual issues in a case are morphed into something more suitable.  If you read the actual court filing, it says: “[T]he Office of Career Advancement Information Technology Couselor [sic] did not make sure their Monroe e-recruiting clients call [sic] the graduates that recently finished college for a [sic] interview to get a job placement.” This is a very specific allegation. If the school promised to do something to assist graduates such as her in finding a job and they didn’t do the things they promised to do, they are in breach of the agreement. Now, she might not win the case, and she almost certainly won’t get the $2,000 she is looking for related to her stress. But she could easily have a valid claim and she doesn’t deserve to be mocked for asserting it.

Would The Birthers Go After Jindal?

Chris Orr suggests yes. Larison says no:

Jindal suffers from none of this baggage, despite the fact that neither of his parents was born in the United States, because he identifies strongly with both the conservative Catholic and American nationalist elements in the GOP. Even though Jindal came to Christianity as a convert just as Obama did, it is the kind of Christianity he embraced that makes a huge difference. His religion and nationalism together immunize him fairly well against any attacks or conspiracy theories of the kind that have been used against Obama. […] Religious identity politics shields him from being regarded as “Other,” and among a significant number of Republicans his story of first-generation American assimilation and success is one of the main reasons why Jindal is so well-liked.

He has a point. After all, Sarah Palin – a female politician with an out-of-wedlock grandchild – was hailed by traditionalist Christians because they saw her as one of their own. Colin Powell was beloved by the Limbaugh right until he crossed the aisle to endorse Obama. Clarence Thomas's loyalty to movement conservatism is returned in kind. And PUMAs never became a consequential force. Perhaps partisanship – especially when it has morphed into a cultural, regional and religious identity as with the Rovian GOP – really is the strongest identity politics of all.

A Brand New Beat

An openly gay black candidate wins one … in Detroit:

Pugh, a former reporter for WJBK-TV (Channel 2) and a radio station personality lost both his parents as a child. His mother was murdered when he was just 3 years old. This is the first political race for Pugh, the first openly gay candidate to win a City Council primary in Detroit. "Wherever we go, we hear that: 'You're going to be the president, you are going to be president,' " Pugh said. "Honestly, I don't want to listen to that because I don't want to make it seem that I'm going to rest on that confidence." Pugh said he is now going to focus on winning over those who doubt his substance and criticize his lack of government experience.

And because it's Detroit, he beat Martha Reeves, and TNC rubs it in.