Month: May 2011

Classic – and so true:

I wouldn’t say I’m surprised. I would say I’m appalled. There are gay organizations with multi-million-dollar budgets, and none of them can seem to scrounge up an executive director who can string a few persuasive lines together and win an argument on basic cable. Why is that every time someone from the Human Rights Campaign is on TV, you just know that we already lost the fight. Whatever the argument is, whatever the question is, it’s over. Some people will say to me, “Who made you spokesperson?” You know what? Nobody. I’m a spokesperson by default.

The beagles are evolving:

Joan Walsh raises an eyebrow at Newt's recent rhetoric:

Newt Gingrich doubled down on his clever new slur against President Obama as "the food stamp president." He tried the line in a Friday speech to the Georgia Republican convention, and he used it again on "Meet the Press Sunday." It's a short hop from Gingrich's slur to Ronald Reagan's attacks on "strapping young bucks" buying "T-bone steaks" with food stamps. Blaming our first black president for the sharp rise in food-stamp reliance (which resulted from the economic crash that happened on the watch of our most recent white president) is just the latest version of Rush Limbaugh suggesting that Obama's social policy amounts to "reparations" for black people.

 … He also told Georgia Republicans Friday that 2012 will be the most momentous election "since 1860," which happens to be the year we elected the anti-slavery Abraham Lincoln president, and he suggested the U.S. bring back a "voting standard" that requires voters to  prove they know American history — which sounds a lot like the "poll tests" outlawed by the Voting Rights Act.

TNC sarcastically sighs, "Clearly an attempt to tag Obama as an effete, latte-sipping liberal. Or foreign. Or Clintonesque. Or something. Anything but race."

It's a new position and driving the GOP up the wall. From last month:

"Paul Ryan has stepped up to the plate. This is a very, very serious budget and I think rivals with [what] John Kasich did as budget chairman in getting to a balanced budget in the 1990s, just for the scale and courage involved … Paul Ryan is going to define modern conservatism at a serious level. You can quibble over details but the general shape of what he's doing will define 2012 for Republicans."

That's nothing compared with his most recent volte-face.

The trouble is that the GOP has long talked up Gingrich's alleged intellectual powers and insight (traits that have never been obvious to this naked eye) and so find themselves hoist on their own Newt. Ryan's plan had already been shelved to all intents and purposes, but the claim of "right-wing social engineering" is a Democratic attack ad just waiting to be made.

Stephen Colbert is trying to start a PAC. Here he is submitting some paperwork to the FEC:

Timothy B Lee feels that Colbert's parody is backfiring:

Stephen Colbert is trying (or at least pretending) to create a vehicle for his fans to pool their money so that Colbert can create ads “promoting” (mocking) conservative candidates. The ads are guaranteed to be funny, and they could also influence 2012 political races. I think that’s a brilliant idea, and I’m glad that the Supreme Court has affirmed Colbert’s (and his fans’) right to engage in this type of political speech. Colbert, in contrast, seems to be mocking his own free of speech rights. By asking us to root against Colbert-the-character’s quest for a PAC, Colbert-the-comedian seems to be implying that it’s ridiculous that the law would allow him to create such a PAC. But it isn’t ridiculous. Colbert should be free to create the PAC, people should be free to give to it, and Colbert should be free to tell people about the PAC on his show.

If the UN recognizes an independent Palestine, Likud has a response – and apparently majority support for it in Israel.

In one respect, it's morning in America.

A reader writes:

You wrote of the NYT's contortions on the t-word that "The entire episode, in historical context, will, I believe, be evidence of the Gray Lady's deep deference to American power."

Remember that– in historical context– the reason the NYT is deferent to American power is that American power has, historically, been deferent to it.

The NYT started in 1851 under the editorship of Henry J. Raymond, a protege of Thurlow Weed, the nation's premier king maker. Because it served the business community, and was more moderate than Horace Greeley's rather squirrelly New York Tribune, it rapidly became the Union's most important newspaper.

To maintain control of the contentious Union during the Civil War, Lincoln needed Weed on his side to pull political strings, and he needed the New York Times to sell his decisions. Weed was a frequent visitor to the White House, and Lincoln's letters to Weed are frankly deferent in a way that he was almost never deferent to anyone.

It was Weed's influence that put Andrew Johnson on the 1864 ticket… when Raymond was both editor of the New York Times and chairman of the Republican National Committee. The New York Times and the Republican Party were intricately linked. They have remained so because of the crucial importance of the New York City financiers – which have always leaned heavily toward Republican policies – to the nation's economic stability. More than any newspaper, the New York Times was a product of the interrelationship of the media and politics from the very beginning.

Yes, I did write the following sentence last night:

A lie in the House of Commons cod be excused, it seems to me, on ccount of being sloshed.

It's now fixed. I swear it wasn't meta.