Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
by John Cole| 29 Comments
This post is in: Media
I’ll be on the radio tomorrow with Jeff Goldstein and crew:
When: Thursday, 3 PM EST
Where: Rightalk Radio
Guests: John Cole, from balloon-juice.com, Michele Catalano, from a small victory.
Topics: The state of political discourse; social cons vs. traditional conservatives; privacy rights vs. government regulatory functions; Atheist Americans; lose women.
Toll-free Call-in number: 1-866-884-8255 (866-884-TALK)
Disclaimer: WE REFUSE TO BE SILENCED!
Offer: If you have any questions you
by John Cole| 17 Comments
This post is in: Democratic Stupidity
I honestly can say that I do not know one person who is against people immigrating lawfully to the United States. Not one. Maybe someone I know is cowed by a sense of social desirability and honestly hates all stinkin’ fur’ners, but right now I honestly do not know anyone who is anti-immigration.
I do, however, know lots of people who are very worried about the rampant illegal immigration occurring on our southern border. I am not even going to leap into the tar baby pits and start a big debate over whether illegal immigrants who act as migrant workers, construction workers, or whatever are a net boon or drain on the economy.
Other people with axes to grind can have their own discussions elsewhere on the issue. Personally, I am right on the fence- part of me acknowledges that the cheap labor is good for the economy, the other part of me understands that this sort of unregulated cheap labor can have a deleterious impact on wage deflation for all workers. But again, that is besides the point.
What is important, however, is that in a post 9/11 world, it is extremely distressing to me that I am forbidden to carry a lighter on an airplane, am basically strip-searched and questioned if I want to fly anywhere, have granted all sorts of new powers to the government regarding warrant acquisitions, have a country that is fighting an actual war on two fronts, yet all the while, there is a several thousand mile GAPING HOLE that you can drive a million terrorists through every year. Or, if you believe the reports, several million Mexicans.
This is a serious issue that simply is not being addressed, and I have no problem when our elected officals make statements like this:
Close the borders in California and all across Mexico and in the United States,” Schwarzenegger said Tuesday at the annual meeting of the Newspaper Association of America. “Because I think it is just unfair to have all those people coming across, have the borders open the way it is, and have this kind of lax situation.”
The Republican governor also suggested exploring several policy proposals aimed at addressing the immigration crisis, including President Bush’s proposed guest worker program and legislation sponsored by Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., to pave the way for undocumented workers already living in the United States to attain legal status.
“This is a very important debate. I think it’s necessary that we solve the problems rather than try to run the other way. It’s a hot issue,” Schwarzenegger said.
Schwarzenegger’s remarks were later clarified by his spokeswoman, Margita Thompson, who said the governor supports greater security along the nation’s borders but was not calling for the borders to be completely closed.
Of course he didn’t mean he wants to shut off all trade and close the border, literally. Everyone knows exactly what he meant- he means stop all the damned illegal border crossings. Only a true wingnut luunatic would interpret it any other way, and since both parties are chock full of them, the opportunists, the con men, and the politicians (Holy loads of redundancy, Batman!) pounced:
n a statement, Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez, D-Los Angeles, said Schwarzenegger’s comments reflected badly on the state’s “productive” relationship with Mexico.
“The Governor should ratchet down his rhetoric and retreat from this narrow-minded approach to immigration policy,” Nunez said. “Closing our borders to commerce and culture is an idea that comes from political extremists, not rational policy-makers.”
Idiotic grandstanding race-baiter. What else can you say? Unfortunately, with our lazy and stupid media, always quick to pounce on something to help make us as lazy and stupid as they are, promoted Nunez’s comments, and Arnold was forced to make a retraction, even when we all knew damned well what he meant:
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger moved quickly today to apologize for suggesting that California’s border with Mexico should be closed in an effort to solve the nation’s illegal immigration problem.
Schwarzenegger said he misspoke in comments to newspaper editors and publishers Tuesday, intending to say the border should be secured. The governor blamed the error on his sometimes flawed use of English — his second language.
“Yesterday was a total screw-up in the words I used,” the governor said at a press conference. “Because instead of closing, I meant securing. I think maybe my English, I need to go back to school and study a little bit.”
This little bit of self-promotion by Nunez and his willing accomplices in the media (and, of course, the blogosphere- check out this picture)is a sterling example of everything that is wrong with politics today.
There are honest to goodness racists out there who may hate immigrants, people of color, etc. Arnold isn’t one of them, and trying to paint him as one is pretty damned reprehensible. But when you can’t have a seriuos debate about something as urgent and pressing as border control without the demagoguery hitting a fever pitch, you aren’t combatting racism- you are merely making the arena of ideas untenable.
To Mr. Nunez and his race-baiting ilk, all I have to say is, “Beunes Noches, credibility.” I will never take you seriously.
This post is in: Open Threads
Donald Sensing has a decent remembrance up that you will want to see.
by John Cole| 66 Comments
This post is in: General Stupidity
From the NY Times:
Less than two years after it was plunged into a rape scandal, the Air Force Academy is scrambling to address complaints that evangelical Christians wield so much influence at the school that anti-Semitism and other forms of religious harassment have become pervasive.
There have been 55 complaints of religious discrimination at the academy in the past four years, including cases in which a Jewish cadet was told the Holocaust was revenge for the death of Jesus and another was called a Christ killer by a fellow cadet.
The 4,300-student school recently started requiring staff members and cadets to take a 50-minute religious-tolerance class.
I don’t know what is going on here, but it doesn’t sound good. Specifically when you have this sort of thing coming from the leadership:
The superintendent, Lt. Gen. John Rosa, conceded there was a problem during a recent meeting of the Board of Visitors, the civilian group that oversees the academy.
”The problem is people have been across the line for so many years when you try and come back in bounds, people get offended,” he said.
The board chairman, former Virginia Gov. James Gilmore, warned Rosa that changing things could prove complicated. He said evangelical Christians ”do not check their religion at the door.”
Here we go again. Some basic infor about the academy:
More than 90 percent of the cadets identify themselves as Christian. A cadet survey in 2003 found that half had heard religious slurs and jokes, and that many non-Christians believed Christians get special treatment.
”There were people walking up to someone and basically they would get in a conversation and it would end with, `If you don’t believe what I believe you are going to hell,”’ Vice Commandant Col. Debra Gray said…
Rosa and other academy leaders say some among the large number of Christian cadets — nearly 2,600 are Protestant, some 1,300 are Roman Catholic, and about 120 are Mormon — may not realize that evangelism is unwelcome among their fellow students. The corps of cadets also includes 44 Jews, 19 Buddhists and a few Muslims, Hindus and others. There are 15 chaplains and one rabbi.
Again, I don’t know what is going on, and I am suspicious of anything that comes from the pressure cookers that are our military academies, but there has to be a little something to this story. At any rate, the reason I am posting this is not to engage in Christian bashing, but to expose this absurd statement:
Two of the nation’s most influential evangelical Christian groups, Focus on the Family and New Life Church, are headquartered in nearby Colorado Springs. Tom Minnery, an official at Focus on the Family, disputed claims that evangelical Christians are pushing an agenda at the academy, and complained that ”there is an anti-Christian bigotry developing” at the school.
Whee! Focus on the Family and James Dobson again. Gotta love it. Now on to the statement from Mr. Minnery-
Of 4300 students, 90% are Christian. That means that 44 Jews and 19 Buddhists (world renowned for their bigotry) are terrorizing 3870 Christians.
For those of you keeping count, that is one Jew for every 88 Christians, and one Buddhists for every 204 Christians. Talk about tyranny of the minority!
Oy Vey!
I wish I could see videotape of Minnery saying that with a straight face.
by John Cole| 3 Comments
This post is in: Domestic Politics
Another setback for the administration:
In a stinging rebuke of President Bush’s signature education law, the Republican-dominated Utah Legislature on Tuesday passed a bill that orders state officials to ignore provisions of the federal law that conflict with Utah’s education goals or that require state financing.
The bill is the most explicit legislative challenge to the federal law by a state, and its passage marked the collapse of a 15-month lobbying effort against it by the Bush administration.
Federal officials fear Utah’s action could embolden other states to resist what many states consider intrusive or unfunded provisions of the federal law, known as No Child Left Behind.
Utah’s action comes as a federal-state conflict over the education law appears to be escalating. The attorney general of Connecticut has announced that he will sue the Department of Education over the law’s finances, Texas is in open defiance of a federal ruling on testing disabled children and many state legislatures have protested various provisions of the federal law, which has required a sweeping expansion of standardized testing.
Despite the fact that education funding went through the roof, it appears we still mandated more than we provided:
The Utah bill leans heavily for its rationale on a provision in the federal education law that Republican congressmen during the first years of the Clinton administration, which forbids federal officials from requiring states to spend their own money to enact the policies outlined in the law.
And the battle between conservatives and big government compassionate conservatives wages on.
by John Cole| 10 Comments
This post is in: Popular Culture
Almost forgot- we have a new pope, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, heretofore to be known as Pope Benedict XVI. I know absolutely nothing about him, although his appointment (ascension??) did spawn this most unfortunate headline:
‘Germany will be very proud’
Because we all know all of the good that can come from a unified, united, and proud Germany. Flame away, I’m German.
Already, for me, at least, the election of a new Pope is paying dividends, as Andrew Sullivan’s steady stream of posts on the man virtually assure that I am no longer the most hysterical man in the blogosphere.
At any rate, it seems to me that Andrew’s chief objection is that the new Pope tends to adhere to church doctrine. Strange sin to get worked up in a lather over. If he were running for President, I might have an issue, but as the leader of his church, it seems to me that is what he is supposed to be doing.
At any rate, Andrew, you are American now, so you can do what all other good Catholics are doing- ignore him when it comes to matters of conscience:
When the pope or official Catholic teaching differs from one’s own conscience, the conscience should be the guide, said 72 percent of Catholics surveyed, with just 18 percent saying the pope must be obeyed.
That is the same finding as twenty years ago when CBS News pollsters first started asking that question.
In this most recent survey, 82 percent of Catholics said you can disagree with the pope and still be a good Catholic; 15 percent said the opposite.
At any rate, here is to a long and healthy reign for Pope Benedict the XVI.
More here in the same vein from Jeff Goldstein, whose radio show I will be a guest on this week.
by John Cole| 97 Comments
This post is in: Domestic Politics
Until reading the comments section of this post on pharmacists refusing to fill perscriptions for moral reasons yesterday, I had no idea that the American pharmacy was the last bastion of Big-L Libertarian Utopia. If you read the comments, and suspended everything you know, you would think the follownig:
Pharmacies can sell whatever they want, whenever they want.
Pharmacists have the right to refuse to fill a prescription for any reason, and some pills are more offensive than others.
In a pharmacy, a ten year old can buy a pack of cigarettes, order an abortion, peruse porno mags, and sip on a .40. You can even sell beer on Sunday, even if they don’t have photo id. The heavy hand of government regulation stops at the doorstep of a pharmacy, you know.
Anyone can be a pharmacist- you don’t need to be trained or licensed or anything. You aren’t dispensing dangerous drugs with possible interactions or health issues- you are just engaging in commerce, ‘selling’ things. Strictly business decisions, here.
Contrary to popular belief, pharmacies are not required to pay taxes, they do not have to adhere to local zoning and constructions standards, they are exempt from the ADA. Their toilets can even use 20 gallons of water per flush, and employees don’t have to wash their hands. Stupid sanitary health standards- damn government meddlers.
In other words, it is just a libertarian free-for-all in your local pharmacy- and hey, if you can’t get what you need at this pharmacy, you just go next door to the other pharmacy, because everyone in the country lives in a town with multiple pharmacies. You know- ‘market solutions’ and all.
So the next time you need a pill to cure something, and the only place to get this heavily regulated drug is in the safety zone of a pharmacy, just remember that they don’t have to sell it to you. You might be black. Or gay. Or a single mother. Or a former drug user. Or an immigrant. Or Catholic. Or Jewish. Or maybe you have tattoos. Or listen to heavy metal. Or, sin of sins in the market driven society- you might be poor.
The last thing we want to do, though, is require that pharmacists fill prescriptions written as a result of a private contractual matter between a licensed physcian and his/her patient. We can’t rquire that they fill those prescriptions or demand that the patient to a provider that will.
Why, if we do that and involve the heavy-hand of government, we will go and crush the last stronghold of Libertarin Utopian ideals in our society. We couldn’t allow that to happen.
You just have to have principles, you know.