Hey, it’s Friday:
Fred Thompson was huffin’ and puffin’,
Like Reagan he said he’s a tough ‘un.
They said “Fred you are…”
“like a bright shiny star.”
But the old goat amounted to nuffin’.Ron Paul is a Doctor from Texas
who sees how the government vexes.
From the president’s lying
about FBI spying
to their “cover your asses” reflexes.
Chris Lehmann talks to Orlando Patterson among others about what this campaign has revealed about the Clintons and the race question:
"I’ve taken a lot of criticism from people saying I’ve not been sensitive enough." But the former president’s stray "kid" reference "is a synonym," Patterson says, "for being ‘uppity,’ it’s a way of saying ‘who is he?’ Throughout the history of America, there has been a history of young leaders, and for [Clinton] to say this in a context of promoting his wife in a very nepotistic way, it’s very disappointing. He’s charging a grown man of being uppity. There’s a race–well, I wouldn’t go so far as to say it’s racist, but there’s a condescension there."
The way the Clintons are treating black leaders is very reminiscent to me of the way they have long treated gay people. When I’m asked by readers about the source of my emotional hostility to the Clintons, a lot of it does indeed go back to how they treated the civil rights issues of the 1990s. In some ways, I preferred the outright hostility of some on the religious right to the condescension and manipulation of the Clintons and their apparatchiks. I’ve never been able to get that bad taste out of my mouth. Which is why I am not in any way surprised by the racial issues they are now embroiled in. They treated the gays this way first.
This is cool:
Chris Mooney discusses the idea. But who’s the boss in most cases? Hard to tell. The good news is: our traffic and influence seem to be growing, hence the interest in monetizing all this:
Tellingly, both The Huffington Post and Daily Kos were slightly ahead of The Economist’s site–and considerably ahead of The New Yorker’s. Even more tellingly, on Technorati’s list of the hundred most-linked information sources, twenty-two were blogs.
Not a racist Colorado joke.
If unwanted pregnancies drop by a larger proportion than abortions, is that a good thing? Drum:
Better access to contraception, better education, and better access to the morning after pill seem to have made a difference over time. For anyone who’s pro-life but not anti-sex, that ought to be good news.
As someone who likes to think of himself as in favor of life and sex, I’d say it’s a good thing on both counts.
The bloggy left is unhappy. Arkades worries here. Rick Perlstein says Reagan was a bad, bad man.
Will violence and disorder spread to its neighbors? The Vigilante Journalist, aka Anne Holmes, is live-blogging from Nairobi here. It’s riveting, indispensable reporting. Money quote:
When I arrived in Kibera it was a virtual war zone. General service Units (GSU), or the Red Berets as they are often referred to, and Administrative Police (AP) were firing live rounds at will into a neighborhood of Kibera, injuring innocent bystanders, one of whom was in his home. They seemed rather to be enjoying themselves, displaying a kind of bloodthirstiness which I had not as yet witnessed.
She has some amazing photographs as well including the one above, with the caption:
A man by the name of Geoffry (last name unavailable) was shot in the neck as he was walking home from work and later died of his wounds in Kibera.
While you’re there, hit her tip-jar.
I’m with Dan:
The reporter sitting on the floor putting actual, tough, reality-based questions to Romney is AP reporter Glen Johnson—and someone ought to pin a medal on him. Romney lied, Johnson called him on it. He didn’t run off and find a Democrat or a rival for the GOP nomination to "dispute Romney’s claim." He reacted the way any reporter—any person—ought to react when they’re being lied to.
I really don’t believe it’s bias to call a candidate on a bald-faced lie. I wish the press corps would do it with the president.
Megan points me to these words of wisdom:
As for policy positions, as best I can tell, the Democrats want to give most of the southwest U.S. to Mexico, and invite Muslim terrorists to publicly behead everyone making more than a million dollars a year, except for Steven Spielberg and George Soros. Republicans, meanwhile, want to kick anyone with a Mexican-sounding name out of the U.S., and conquer the entire Middle East so that Halliburton will have work after it kills all the porpoises while drilling for oil off the U.S. coast, which will soon be just east of Kansas City, as a result of the Bush-Reagan-Hitler global warming conspiracy.
Both parties are convinced that government is exceptionally skilled at doing things they want more of, and entirely incompetent when it comes to things they don’t like.
