From the WaPo:
There have probably been stupider ones, but it’s pretty goddamn dumb, even if it does bring good tidings about Turd Blossom’s attempt to make an issue out of Hillary’s owie. Brain flap? Jeebus. Open thread.
by Betty Cracker| 146 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads
From the WaPo:
There have probably been stupider ones, but it’s pretty goddamn dumb, even if it does bring good tidings about Turd Blossom’s attempt to make an issue out of Hillary’s owie. Brain flap? Jeebus. Open thread.
by Betty Cracker| 119 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads, RIP
Rest in peace, Maya Angelou, author, poet and activist (1928-2014).
Still I Rise
You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I’ll rise.Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
‘Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I’ll rise.Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops,
Weakened by my soulful cries?Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don’t you take it awful hard
‘Cause I laugh like I’ve got gold mines
Diggin’ in my own backyard.You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I’ve got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?Out of the huts of history’s shame
I rise
Up from a past that’s rooted in pain
I rise
I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.
I got to meet her once. I had a work-study job at the performing arts center at my college. She was kind to an awe-stuck minimum-wage flunky.
UPDATE
Also, President Obama is about to deliver the commencement speech at West Point. You can watch a live stream here. [H/T: Valued commenter Elizabelle]
by $8 blue check mistermix| 84 Comments
This post is in: World's Best Healthcare (If You Can Afford It)
Mental illness can shorten lives more than chain smoking, and America, unsurprisingly, is pretty bad at treating it. From what I can tell, Obamacare will help this a little bit, since even the lowest level of policy has better mental illness coverage than what insurance companies could get away with pre-ACA.
At my old Congressional race blog, I had a conservative commenter who was pretty reasonable, by which I mean that he was willing to accept that Obamacare was essentially a Republican plan and that he could more-or-less accept it. But he was adamant that he should be able to opt out of mental health coverage. He apparently felt that mental illness could only happen to lesser mortals, which is an attitude that is all too prevalent.
This post is in: Open Threads
Inspired by the recent thread on wingnut darling Ben Carson, MD — Welfare Wasn’t Welfare Back in My Day — valued commenter eric forwarded an account of a recent school outing and asked me to share it with y’all, so here goes:
Yesterday, my daughter was part of the the Chicago’s Children Chorus presentation at Millennium Park in Chicago. The gathering had the highly selective singers on stage and the hundreds of school kids singing with them in the audience.
The Choir celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act, Nelson Mandela, and civil rights generally with a great musical selection. The singers were extraordinary.
While standing there taking it all in, I was moved to tears a number of times over the hope, joy, and vibrancy of the young faces of all sorts of races and ethnicities. I am poorly capturing the essence, I know, but the joy was immeasurable. (Missing a day of school to be outside did not hurt, I am sure.)
But the moment that stood out for me was when the special guest came on stage. Herself a former singer in the Children’s Choir, she is now playing Diana Ross in the touring production of Motown. She brought it and was spectacular. But what I noticed, and why I write, was the rapt attention from the young black girls in the audience. To my eye, it was more than just watching and singing along, they were seeing something else up close — a successful black woman that had the whole event in the palm of her hand. (I am not assuming that many don’t see the same thing in their own home, but that in the larger popular culture it is much less frequent to see a black woman in charge of the room.)
All of what i saw reinforced that we, as a people, need to make sure that young people of every type see people like them succeed. Sometimes to get that success we need to reach out and give a helping hand, be it for nutrition, education, or employment. Success is a positive feedback loop.
All of this is to say that Ben Carson’s remarks are toxic, for in the world he would create there will be fewer success stories to inspire the next generation. To my mind, Ben Carson and Clarence Thomas are ashamed that they can’t say that their success was one-hundred percent their own because they see that as a slight. Success is NEVER one-hundred percent your own because you owe someone, somewhere who did something for you.
I know this because I am a father to a wonderful daughter and my success is measured by who and what she becomes not by who and what I am. If Carson and Thomas, and their ilk, saw the true measure of their success as providing a model to the boys and girls of the Children’s Choir to make it a step farther than they might make it on their own, perhaps they would no longer create a sense of shame in themselves that lead them to so abandon what is best about us — our future generations.
I had a good early role model in my mom, who was tough as hell and mostly fearless. Professionally, I’ve been mentored by strong, opinionated women — and men — who encouraged me to find my voice and never lose sight of what is truly important.
Who are your role models, and why? Please feel free to discuss other topics as well — open thread.
Morning Open Thread – Role Models EditionPost + Comments (78)
by John Cole| 42 Comments
This post is in: WTF?
It’s 2:15 in the morning and I am lying in bed looking at the ceiling unable to sleep because something is bothering me. Not world peace, starving people, politics, the nuclear clock. No. None of that.
What is keeping me awake is what exactly was the Swedish chef saying on the muppets? WTF did bork, bork, bork mean?
There are days when I feel like my whole existence is a parody of a Marc Maron podcast.
This Is What Going Insane Must Feel LikePost + Comments (42)
by John Cole| 32 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads
Quick Holly update- she’s in rehab in White Plains, and I think this picture says it all:
She’s a tough woman.
by DougJ| 113 Comments
This post is in: Blogospheric Navel-Gazing
Believe it or not, I’m pretty proud of the level of discourse on this blog. I don’t always agree with everyone but there are many people here — both on the FP and in the comments — where if they say something I don’t agree with, I try to read their arguments carefully to see what they’re getting at. What higher praise can there be?
(Just as an aside, I’m also proud of the diversity of the BJ community. It’s definitely informed how I see a lot of issues and I don’t think someone like Freddie would spend so much time mansplaining to women and defending Donald Sterling if he wrote for a more diverse audience.)
But the rest of the world is mostly not this way. Example: Jeffrey Goldberg says that if the NYT decided not to run Mike Kinsley’s sophomoric review of Greenwald’s book, that would be censorship on the same level as not running stories on Snowden’s NSA revelations.
.@JeffreyGoldberg One writer defends prior restraint. Another argues that idea isn't up to a paper's standards. Only the latter offends you?
— Radley Balko (@radleybalko) May 28, 2014
I don’t doubt that Golberg could pull some ridiculous rationalization for this out of his ass, but there’s no way you can convince me that he’s not governed primarily by his emotion and in-group mentality on this issue. So when I say the following, yes I am serious, but I don’t necessarily mean it about many of you.
Anyway, this is why I generally recommend ignoring the so-called substance of human beings’ arguments and focusing instead on the psychology that motivates their positions.
I think the question of how seriously to take “wonkery” is an important question. There are writers I respect immensely — Elias Isquith, Jim Newell, for example — who believe that Ezra Klein’s wonk shtick is Broderism 2.0. I don’t believe this, but I see their point.
Still I look to find a reason to believePost + Comments (113)