Maybe when Arizona gets done with their bake sale to build a fence to keep out the brown menace, they can chip in to help build a wall around Ohio.
Racial Justice
Push it real good
There’s no way on earth that any kind of major immigration reform will pass between now and November, 2012. Democrats should push the issue anyway, though, because (a) it’s a big political winner and (b) if Republicans take enough of a beating among Latino voters in 2012, they may change their tune and help pass something in the next Congress or the one after.
I understand the rationale for not pushing it earlier. I don’t know if Democrats had 60 Senators ready to vote for it — Ben Nelson and Evan Bayh are cynical enough and dumb enough to have thought it would be a bad idea, for example — in the last Congress and if Obama had tried and failed with a Democratic Congress, it would have looked worse than not trying at all.
Now is a perfect time to try. Republicans will block it and they’ll pay a price at the polls for doing so. The only way to make progress on this issue right now is beat Republicans with it until they say uncle.
Brother Can You Spare Some Ratings
And Obama continues to kick Trump’s ass:
A supersized edition of Donald Trump’s competition series Celebrity Apprentice spanned three hours, going head-to-head against the rest of primetime on Sunday.
But, NBC’s three-hour telecast — which saw Star Jones and LaToya Jackson fired and NeNe Leakes quitting — didn’t fare so well: Celebrity Apprentice (7 million total viewers, 2.4 rating in the adults 18-49 demographic) was the lowest-rated spring telecast for the franchise, dipping 23 percent. Dateline (3.9 million, 0.8) served as a weak lead-in, down 33 percent. The Peacock placed fourth for the night in the key demo.
CBS won the night with 60 Minutes (13.8 million, 2.3) surging 43 percent, thanks to President Obama’s only televised interview about Osama bin Laden’s death. The two-hour finale of The Amazing Race (8.6 million, 2.5) was the lowest-rated in franchise history. CSI: Miami (9.7 million, 2.0), however, ended its season with a double-digit uptick, but still was one of the series’ lowest-rated episodes.
Poor thing. Racism just doesn’t sell the way it used to…
Shoobedoowah DANCE: Beyonce and FLOTUS Team Up for “Let’s Move” Campaign to Fight Childhood Obesity
The Broccoli Mandate is coming for your children
Michelle Obama is working to raise a healthier generation of children by shoving fruits and vegetables down your childrens’ trap — under penalty of death. (Well, that’s the Teabilly take on it.)
In reality, she is simply trying to get people to understand that childhood obesity leads to adulthood obesity and maybe if we help kids understand the value of a good diet and some exercise, they won’t grow up to be a prediabetic cookie-eating blogger who refuses to go to the gym because gyms are really gross and smell like sweat and ass.
Um, what were we talking about?
Michelle is really getting into the groove, as it were, teaming up with Beyoncé to get kids to shake their asses rather than sitting on them:
Donald Trump Replaced as Indy 500 Pace Car Driver
I really can’t handle another “You’re Fired” joke
Renowned Orange Supremacist Donald Trump was slated to drive the pace car for the 100th anniversary Indy 500, but fans — led by Indianapolis attorney Michael Wallack — raised a stink about it, arguing that he is “too politically motivated.”
Wallack had this to say about Trump:
I have no problem if Trump dislikes President Obama or his policies. But to step over the line into the realm of conspiracy-mongering is not good for politics or for America. And it should not be rewarded with the honor of driving the pace car at the Indianapolis 500.
Indeed.
Jalopnik reported earlier today that the Indy speedway folks were trying to figure out a way to dump Trump, after Trump claimed that he wouldn’t go quietly.
But, apparently, now that he has decided that he really is running for President, like ferreals ferreals, Trump has bowed out of the Indy 500 festivities:
Donald Trump Replaced as Indy 500 Pace Car DriverPost + Comments (83)
You Say Muslim, I Say Terrorist
Somehow, as every day passes, we manage to find bigger and bigger assholes out there:
A ninth grade algebra teacher was suspended from a Texas school district after making offensive comments to a Muslim student in front of the entire class.
“The teacher told the student that ‘I bet you’re grieving,'” the mother of a student in the same class told ABC13. “And she basically looked at him and said what are you talking about? And he said I heard about your uncle’s death and she said wow, because she understood that he was referring about Osama bin Laden being killed and was racially profiling her.”
She added that the teacher “just kind of smirked and giggled and walked away” after the Muslim student ended up crying over the comments.
Sigh.
Just put your lips together and blow
I felt sick to my stomach when the White House released Obama’s birth certificate. I was afraid this was the moment where it all came tumbling down, when the United States showed that it couldn’t handle having a black person as president, that this presidency would soon be politically delegitimatized somehow.
Three days later I realize that I was completely wrong, that Obama clearly believes that birtherism is an albatross for Republicans. Some wingers are even complaining about how deftly Obama is using birtherism against Republicans
This is the first time in my political lifetime that race-baiting has blown up in Republicans’ face. This is not that much of an explosion, but this does make them look bad and another six months of Trump probably does hurt the Republicans’ 2012 chances. Birtherism has reversed the pattern of higher and higher-pitched dog whistles. Lee Atwater said:
You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968 you can’t say “nigger” — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now [that] you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites.
There’s nothing abstract about birtherism or about Trump’s questioning of Obama’s intellect and that’s certainly a big part of why this is a bad “issue” for Republicans; it’s not a dog whistle when everyone can hear it. But also too, race-baiting has probably lost its ability to swing independent voters.
In 2008, we were told over and over again that white Americans wouldn’t vote for a black candidate, no matter what the polls said. The Bradley effect! Well, they did. This came after a Republican primary where the most pro-immigrant candidate emerged as the nominee in a contest dominated by immigrant-bashing early on.
The last forty years of American politics were the story of how conservatives used race-baiting to make themselves a viable political force and sometimes genuine majority. The next forty will be the story of how this strategy ultimately will destroy them.
When the Reverend Wright stuff started to go down, when the PUMAs started babbling about whitey tapes, when birtherism started gaining momentum, I was hoping conservatives wouldn’t play the race card. Now, I wish a motherfucker would play the race card.