I’m in a rush, so not much to say, other than that we have a new front pager added to the stable. She should be making her debut sometime in the near future. Maybe even today!
Open Thread
by John Cole| 59 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads, Site Maintenance
shortstop
Oooh, I hope it’s who I think it is! If it is, I was just about to write you to endorse her candidacy!
dmsilev
You booked Sarah Palin? Wow.
dms
roshan
Yay, meritocracy!
via Greenwald
James Hare
I think I’m going to reread Vonnegut’s “Player Piano.” My vague memories of the book seem like it would be eerily prescient right now. It’s kind of a shame Vonnegut died before the good part of the Obama campaign (even with the economic downturn, 2008 was the best election year EVAR!!) because it might have just gotten him to be a little less cynical.
Of course him dying before 2009 had its virtues. A cynic is always proved right.
James Hare
@dmsilev:
Naw this is just another thing Bristol didn’t tell Mom about.
Ned R.
Folks, it’s obviously Lily. She’ll provide the inside scoop on what REALLY happens at the Cole compound.
Econwatcher
I was just reminiscing about what first got me hooked on this site: I happened to click over (from Sully, I think) and strolled through the comments section.
Apropos of nothing, a bunch of commenters were having an impromptu competition to see who could pen the best “wingnut haiku.” And some of the entries were absolutely brilliant.
I thought to myself, “I’ve found my way home.”
Face
Did you just call her a horse?
TR
I hear the new blogger is Amanda Marcotte.
cd6
I have a new tag suggestion that I’m sure DougJ will love.
Over at HotAir, special ed has worked himself into an outrage about the daily caller’s current “journolist exclusive” that the libruls wanted to quash the Rev Wright story by pointing out conservatives were racists.
Italics are his, to emphasize the outrage.
Why won’t democrats attack the REAL racists? Why do they have to go after journalists like Fred Barnes, the Bob Woodward of our age?
Here’s the hot air thread, if you can stand the stupidity:
http://hotair.com/archives/2010/07/20/daily-caller-discovers-journolist-plot-to-spike-wright-story-smear-conservatives-as-racists/
stuckinred
@Ned R.: SCOOP is right!
Chyron HR
If it’s not Elizabeth Warren, I’m boycotting your site forever.
(P.S. Who is Elizabeth Warren?)
Punchy
@TR: Nope. It’s Jane Hamsher. Of the Left.
Dork
I’d like to see John’s mom write some posts. I think Moms can say some wicked cool stuff, being all introspective yet battle-hardened at all. My Mom, for example, would just rip homeschoolers and illegal immigration on every post.
RedKitten
@Ned R.:
That would be AWESOME. In fact, I would hugely enjoy an entire series of posts written from Tunch’s, Lily’s or Rosie’s point of view. That would make me haz a happy.
SiubhanDuinne
@RedKitten #15: In return, could we get a series of “Advntures in a Nova Scotia Stroller” by a young kitten of our virtual acquaintance?
Shalimar
@Dork: My mom would name-drop all the rich and politically famous people she knows and brag about her grand-kids. Ugh.
cleek
TR made a sad
RedKitten
@SiubhanDuinne:
How about on his first birthday? I’ll ask John if SamKitten can guest-post his “year in retrospective”.
D-Chance.
… we have a new front pager added to the stable.
American beer.
Kristine
@Econwatcher: That’s one thing that keeps me coming back. Not just the relative civility of the commenters–yes, you nice people, you know who you are–but the fact that I enjoyed reading the comments as much as I did the main post.
Come for the puppies, stay for the pie!
A Guest
Is it matoko chan? Pretty please!
shortstop
This blog boasts the wittiest and most intelligent commenting threads out there. I don’t even mind the bouts of incivility because they’re generally so masterfully rendered.
cleek
today, in racism. yuck.
Little Dreamer
I’m looking forward to another female voice on this blog. I was beginning to think the ratio of 5-1 didn’t seem very equal. 5-2 still isn’t, but it’s better than 5-1.
Little Dreamer
@cleek:
I saw the video of this incident on MSNBC last night. UGH!
This is a timely argument though, the NAACP is showing that it is smart enough to put the spotlight on racism where ever it happens, even if the remarks were made by a black woman. Good going for the NAACP!
roshan
@Little Dreamer:
Dude, this is not The Daily Show.
WereBear
Kudos to you, John, for thinking like President Obama… and adding another female to a tilted playing field.
Nerf
Pleeeeeeeeease be Tits McGee
Little Dreamer
@roshan:
I’m not a dude, and I ignored your link.
demo woman
@Little Dreamer: I’m sure Fox News will air the entire story at noon.!
Little Dreamer
@demo woman:
That’s funny. She makes a racist statement and then because they didn’t give her more airtime she states what she said wasn’t racist? What I saw her state was racist. I didn’t need to see anymore.
Linda Featheringill
OT:
I read Eugene’s column at WaPo about racism and TeaParty members. Very upsetting.
I was raised to be a racist. It took several years of consciously looking at the facts to lift me out of that propoganda. I found solace in judging everyone individually. [Barack is smarter than I am but I’m smarter than the punk on the street who thinks that testerone makes him a winner.]
Way back when I was younger, I used to hear the crap that Eugene was quoting all the time. And then I read the quotes from the leader of hte TeaParty Federation and felt like my whole life had been wasted.
Who was the guy in mythology who was condemned to push a heavy rock up the hill only to have it roll to the bottom again? That’s the way I feel.
Damn. Is there no hope for humans?
Little Dreamer
@Linda Featheringill:
So was I, but it didn’t take. I was raised to be a Republican as well, and I’m the only one of my family who didn’t embrace that ideology. My parents are rolling over in their graves, I’m sure!
WereBear
@Linda Featheringill: Sisyphus rolled the rock uphill.
But to answer your question, yes, we’ve progressed. The fact that they cannot be seen to be racist is a huge step forward. Shame is productive in itself.
And the ancient Greeks lived in a democracy where 90% of the population were slaves.
And… we have dental anesthetic!
It’s all good.
Kryptik
@Linda Featheringill:
Sisyphus. And yeah, we’re Sisyphus right now at this point, with a little bit of Cassandra mixed in.
And both the USDA official story, as well as a Ezra earlier pretty much demonstrate why I find myself politically hopeless these days.
The USDA official story demonstrates the absolute control over exposure and Conventional Wisdom the right has. How remarkable that the context was lost, AND the impression that the racism was completely utterly one way, from the USDA official against the farmer (despite the official explicitly saying she felt totally condescended to, because of her race). And the time frame…what a surprise.
And Ezra’s piece demonstrates why, even in victory, I don’t have much to celebrate, because even when the Republicans lose, they win. They win because they’re able to cut down just about every major Dem resolution down into uselessness, and shift the goalposts continually so even the weakest of measures is ‘UNAMERICAN SOSHULISMS!’. Combined with their total utter control of media exposure and CW and…yeah. I’m just left waiting for that big ass boulder to roll down again today, so we can push it back up…and watch it roll down tomorrow.
demo woman
Today is election day in GA. The polling site where I voted was empty, although I did see a gentleman walking towards the building. It will be interesting to see how many votes were cast in the democratic primary from my precinct.
I should mention that the district I live in is quite conservative.
Little Dreamer
Whatever capacity that USDA official was working in, if she felt condescended to, that still doesn’t alleviate her duty to help someone who came in for help, as much as she can, despite whatever treatment she received by others. If she felt she couldn’t do that, she should have resigned from that duty. Look, I’m not giving a pass to the white guy if he treated her differently due to her race, but, he wasn’t in the position to decide how much help to give based on feelings that discrimination had occured. She made that choice herself.
R-Jud
The new FP is Kay, right? Please let it be Kay.
demo woman
@Little Dreamer: I do think that the time frame when the event occurred matters. At the time of the incident she was not working for the USDA and there is no evidence that she showed bias during her work with the USDA.
Kryptik
@Little Dreamer:
I’m not speaking about the actual choice for her to limit aid. I’m more talking about the fact that, even with her choice unjustified, the coverage of whole incident seems to be putting ALL force of racism against her, as if the white farmer was just begging for help in polite language and she was being a cruel Black Power bitch about it. That’s the impression I’ve gotten when the story has been brought up elsewhere and in more common conversation.
Add in the fact that it’s a decades old incident outside of her current job, and she was plainly recounting the incident remorsefully, and it continues to feel like a hatchet job, even if there is no justification for her withholding aid during that incident.
shortstop
Oh, no, no, no. You’re not a racist today, despite your upbringing, are you? (Leaving out of this discussion the fact that all of us raised in the privileged racial majority have some racism in us, however unconscious it may be.)
That’s how social evolution works. One person, one changed mind at a time.
Yeah, I know I’m a sap. Sosume.
eemom
what ever happened to the dude who was gonna talk about energy stuff?
Little Dreamer
@demo woman:
I said “whatever capacity she was working in” – I do realize it was in a position that she held prior to being a USDA official. It doesn’t matter when or what position she held. If a poor store clerk can’t put total effort into helping some rich guy find the baked beans because he felt talked down to, that, too, is an employment position that should have been vacated.
Little Dreamer
@Kryptik:
Well, I don’t look upon her a black bitch. I look upon her as someone who made an emotional decision to feel discriminated against and take it out on the person she felt was discriminating. If she held a position to help others keep their farms (or whatever her job was), it was her duty to perform her job to the utmost despite those feelings. She didn’t. She admitted it. She recounted her choice to make a racist decision.
Little Dreamer
@demo woman:
I realize that, but she made public statements that she chose to take a racist stance. If she didn’t want this to backfire on her, perhaps she should have not recounted that story. She admitted racism, the NAACP picked on it and hit back. EOS!
WaterGirl
@R-Jud: I thought I didn’t have a dog in this race until you mentioned Kay’s name. That would be awesome. If it’s not Kay this time, I hope it is next time! Even if I’m just skimming through the comments, I read every word she writes.
Corner Stone
@cleek: I was up a little early this morning and accidentally turned on Morning Joe.
The panel was discussing the USDA “scandal” and Joe went on to list many other black v white “scandals” such as ACORN, NBPP and the Beer Summit, etc and said how news orgs had been late in covering them all until after they “blew up”.
No one said a word to dispute any of this.
He then turned to Norah O’Donnell and she did what all good media sheep do, she agreed with him and said something like, “Even the WaPo Ombudsman admitted they didn’t do a very good job covering the NBPP scandal.”
So there you have it friends. The WaPo has served their purpose and provided enough smoke for another “news” outlet to climb onto the “liberal” media canard.
I can’t find the transcript, if they even do that for MJ, so this is all summary, not verbatim.
Mnemosyne
@Little Dreamer:
You’ve never worked retail, have you? Believe it or not, retail clerks are not there to be your slaves. They’re there to do a job to the best of their ability and are not actually required to go the extra mile for people, regardless of how rich that person is.
I don’t know how we got to the point where people think they can abuse service people as some kind of a right and the service person just has to smile and eat shit, but it seems we have.
timb
Since this here’s an open thread, can someone do a post on what an asshole Breitbart is. He took a story some bureaucrat told an NAACP meeting about how she became less of a racist and edited it to take out any context (you know, where she worked for a private coop at the time and wasn’t working for government and, you know, like it was 25 years ago) to make her seem like a huge racist.
He ruined this woman for sport and did it dishonestly and disingenuously and the entire liberal blogosphere is silent on the issue. It royally pisses me off
Kryptik
@timb:
This is pretty much my issue with the whole thing. They twisted the whole point of her speech, inverted it, ruined her career (at least in the short term), mainly to try and make a political point against the NAACP in revenge for the Tea Party thing.
And….the media lets it happen.
Little Dreamer
@Mnemosyne:
Yes, I have worked retail, on and off since 1978. I’ve spent most of my life working in retail positions. If I don’t have the self-control to not take personal feelings out on customers, I don’t belong in that position. If I want to go home and rant and open a beer to let off some steam, fine, but I shouldn’t be making decisions to treat people differently just because they’re assholes.
The customer is always right, that’s the sort of retail I worked. Funny, that canard doesn’t seem to work anymore. The customer seems to never be right these days.
Little Dreamer
@Mnemosyne:
If you want to make the money, you have to smile and eat shit. Then you go home and you enjoy the fruits of that labor and forget about it. That’s the reality. If you think it’s not, you’re living in a different world than I am. Service clerks are not encouraged to take their personal feelings out on someone who is looking to purchase goods and comes cross as angry, whoever gave you that idea? Service, in case you haven’t noticed, is a word that is a VERB too! That’s what the job is about, giving service, and the personal concerns of the service worker are NOT involved, they’re on the clock, doing their job.
If they can’t do that job without creating arguments with clientele, they should find another job that is more suitable to them.
Little Dreamer
@Mnemosyne:
Gosh, I didn’t realize that my making less than $20,000 a year (and many years minimum wage) made me an upper class elite who doesn’t understand the plight of service people.
You’re making assumptions that you have no clue about.
dj spellchecka
@ john cole
nate @ 538 has an interesting post gaming out the senate race in wv…
http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2010/07/there-is-no-such-thing-as-free-shot-at.html
licensed to kill time
Please, please let it be kay. Please?
trollhattan
I am informed that beginning next February, I and my publicly schooled child will be celebrating an annual Zombie Reagan day. Each year we will split some firewood, bust a union, sell some military shit to Iran (we’re being iranic!), create a recession, speak of the dangers of Medicare without using scare quotes, and tear down a wall.
http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalertlatest/2010/07/schwarzenegger-signs-legislati.html
I’ll add that Ed Roberts mentioned in the above piece, was twice the man Reagan was, regardless of his being quadraplegic.
asiangrrlMN
@Little Dreamer: Really? You didn’t need to see more? Like how she helped the guy after all and realized that she was wrong about her remark (per Benen)? That won’t make a difference in your moral judgement of her? Because it certainly made a difference to me.
And, while we’re talking about front pagers, a woman of color would be nice. I’m just sayin’.
SiubhanDuinne
@RedKitten: Damn! That is just a FABULOUS idea! And it’s coming up in just a few weeks, I believe.