Archives for Category "Republicans"
March 25, 2008
Virginia for the Haters
There is a lot TheGuy and I like about living in Virginia, but sometimes some of the idiot haters down in Richmond remind me of some of the things we really don't. The latest "conservative" display of bigotry and hate here in the great Commonwealth is rightwing Attorney General McDonnell claiming that state universities in Virginia do not have to offer in-state tuition to U.S.-born students whose parents happen to be undocumented immigrants. The ACLU of VA's Executive Director says:Under the AG’s line of reasoning, a U.S. citizen born in Virginia and who has spent his entire life here could be denied in-state tuition because his parents are not lawfully present. That’s patently unfair and a bit preposterous, if you think about it. At the very least it violates a fundamental tenet of U.S law -- that you do not punish children for the actions of their parents.It's not only bigoted, it's anti-American, and anti-education. But, I'm not really surprised.
These days, of course, stuff about education is starting to become personal for us. If we still happen to be in Virginia when it's time for TheLittleGuy to go to college, I will certainly encourage him to consider some of Virginia's fine colleges and universities to help save his poor parents some money. (I'll be suggesting options outside of VA too, I'm sure.) Hopefully, whatever wingnut Taliban-types are in office at the time won't be trying to deny access to education to my kid simply because his mother has some trait(s) they find undesirable. But, you know they would if they could.
<=> | in: Civil Rights & Feminism / Parenting / Religion & Politics / Republicans / State & Local
February 12, 2008
The Intellectual Quality is Staggering
Atrios just pointed to a classic of the form -- conservative thought processes on display for all to see!Erick Erickson, editor of the popular conservative megablog RedState, conceded that progressives currently enjoy an advantage over conservatives online-though he attributed it to an asymmetry in free time, since conservatives "have families because we don't abort our kids, and we have jobs because we believe in capitalism."The sheer intellectual depth and brilliance -- it is truly, truly staggering! Are these the great "ideas" that the conservative movement is said to have produced in such immense quantity over liberals and other such terrorist sympathizers? I mean... cuz I could never have come up with ideas quite like those, it is true. My wee brain just doesn't work that way. Poor, poor me! Bereft of "ideas", I am!
<=> | Comments: 9 | in: Republicans
February 11, 2008
Primary in Old Dominion Tomorrow
The presidential primary for Virginia, Maryland, and D.C. is tomorrow. (Some are calling it the "Potomac primary" and I've also seen the "Chesapeake primary.") I don't think I've ever voted in a primary where the nominee wasn't already "decided." And, just my luck, I'm truly undecided on this one. In a perfect world, I have serious reservations about both Clinton and Obama. In this world, they are both stellar candidates against anything the Republicans have to offer. I could still vote for Edwards, as I believe he's still on the ballot. Or, since I'm so torn, I could just not vote at all. Or, since Virgina has open primaries, I could go vote in the Republican primary - but that's not a particularly palatable option, either. I suspect either I won't go, or I'll decide while staring at the little touch screen.On, and just to wander into the political junkie weeds for a moment: on this whole super-delegate question -- yo, people, the rules are the rules. If anyone thought this was a horrible way for the party to determine its nominee, where was the big protest and screeching earlier? Besides, I truly don't think it'll come to that, but even if it does, I'm with Digby, and, heaven help me, Kevin Drum:
[Drum:] Who decides what the popular will is anyway? Is it number of pledged delegates from the state contests? Total popular vote? Total number of states won? What about uncommitted delegates from primary states? Or caucus states, in which there's no popular vote to consult and delegates are selected in a decidedly nondemocratic fashion to begin with? And what about all the independent and crossover voters? Personally, I'd just as soon they didn't have a say in selecting the nominee of my party at all, but the rules say otherwise. If I'm a superdelegate, do I count their votes, or do I pore over exit polls to try to tease out how Democratic Party voters voted? And how do I take into account the obviously disproportionate influence of Iowa and New Hampshire, two tiny states that have far more power than any truly democratic process would ever give them?This is related to another thing I find pretty puzzling -- all the anxiousness over the fact that the primary selection process is taking awhile and is actually competitive for more than 2 states' worth of voting. Why is this a bad thing? I know the media will do their usual "Dems in disarray" bullshit, but I truly fail to see the problem. I wish most primaries worked like this--remained competitive, that is--and I'm fairly amused at the fact that after a bunch of states jockeyed to move their primaries as early as possible, this thing might play out all the way into April (at least on the Dem side). It's not disarray, it's, as I overheard someone on the elevator at work say today, an overabundance of riches. Two strong candidates, an engaged and participating Democratic electorate--where's the bad, again? By the way, one of my sources in Maine says that my hometown's Democratic caucus turnout was huge this year - in 2004 something like a dozen people showed up; this time it was almost 200.
[... back to Digby:] I am all for insisting that the decision be based upon the will of the people. But the system is so weird that I don't think anyone can tell what that really will be if the party remains polarized.
So while I am certainly sympathetic to the notion that the elite fat cats shouldn't decide for us, I think somebody needs to set forth some detailed criteria about how they should go about determining a more democratic way to decide this thing if there is a tie.
<=> | Comments: 7 | in: Democrats / Federal Politics / Republicans / State & Local
November 14, 2007
Reagan's Racist Pandering
Bob Herbert and Paul Krugman at the New York Times have done a good job pushing back at those (like that idiot shill David Brooks) trying to whitewash Ronald Reagan's racist pandering during his candidacy and presidency.Krugman mocks the notion that bleating about "states rights" in a town where three civil rights workers were murdered was just an "innocent mistake":
Similarly, when Reagan declared in 1980 that the Voting Rights Act had been “humiliating to the South,” he didn’t mean to signal sympathy with segregationists. It was all an innocent mistake.Herbert:
In 1982, when Reagan intervened on the side of Bob Jones University, which was on the verge of losing its tax-exempt status because of its ban on interracial dating, he had no idea that the issue was so racially charged. It was all an innocent mistake.
And the next year, when Reagan fired three members of the Civil Rights Commission, it wasn’t intended as a gesture of support to Southern whites. It was all an innocent mistake.
Everybody watching the 1980 campaign knew what Reagan was signaling at the fair. Whites and blacks, Democrats and Republicans — they all knew. The news media knew. The race haters and the people appalled by racial hatred knew. And Reagan knew.On a related note, Orcinus has a useful collection of strategies to use when people say bigoted or racist things right in front of you. Fortunately, I don't come up against that very often -- but there are certainly circumstances where I need to brace myself and be prepared for it, so it's good to have a few more handy tactics in my back pocket. Some of my favorites (not always applicable in all situations):
He was tapping out the code. It was understood that when politicians started chirping about “states’ rights” to white people in places like Neshoba County they were saying that when it comes down to you and the blacks, we’re with you.
And Reagan meant it. He was opposed to the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964, which was the same year that Goodman, Schwerner and Chaney were slaughtered. As president, he actually tried to weaken the Voting Rights Act of 1965. He opposed a national holiday for the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He tried to get rid of the federal ban on tax exemptions for private schools that practiced racial discrimination. And in 1988, he vetoed a bill to expand the reach of federal civil rights legislation.
After the umpteenth spew of racial slurs at a family gathering, I informed my husband that the next time it happened I would gather our sons and he had five minutes to join me in the car or he was walking home. After doing this the in-laws got the hint and at least I don't have to hear it as often any more.I can't document my best comeback here but trust me, it was a good one. And funny. Ask me in person sometime.
I straight laugh at people, call them "Strom Thurmond" and "David Duke", tell them to go down to city hall and have a fruity-ass white pride parade in front until they feel good enough about themselves to not spout 150-year old stereotypes. [tho then there's the "fruity-ass" issue -- I probably wouldn't use that term!]
Gotta say, the best comeback of this thread is..."You are proud to have that opinion? Please explain." Racists, while not self-aware in general, are generally conscious enough to know when they have been called an asshole and yet have no reasonable recourse to violence in the face of a normal and polite question.
<=> | in: Civil Rights & Feminism / Republicans
September 3, 2007
Larry Craig and the Media
You know what bugged me most about the whole sad Larry Craig debacle? (For those not keeping score at home, Larry Craig is the Republican Senator from Idaho who pled guilty earlier this summer to disorderly/lewd conduct in an airport bathroom sex solicitation sting - apparently rumors have circulated for years that Craig is closeted...) What bothers me most is not the rampant Republican hypocrisy. Who here is surprised that yet another high-level Republican's "private" life is full of sexual hypocrisy? How many times does this sort of thing have to happen before recognizing that Republicans are a bunch of total head cases when it comes to sex and sexuality? Big surprise, there? (Read Talking Points Memo for the past week or two to get up to speed on this latest hypocritical Republican sex scandal.)And, what bugs me is not even how completely offensive it is that the moralizing, judgmental, stick-their-nose-in-your-private business party is the one that always gets caught paying for sex or having sex in other ways they've tried to make illegal. The most ironic comment most recently about this sort of thing was Rudy Giuliani snapping at someone who asked about his estrangement from his kids. He said something to the effect: you leave my family alone and I'll leave your family alone. Apart from the veiled threat there, and apart from the fact that Rudy's trying to be the candidate of the self-proclaimed "family values" party, who here thinks that ANY REPUBLICAN is going to leave their family alone? A major purpose for that party, it seems, is to dictate how people should live their lives and what constitutes a right and proper family and what doesn't. So I'm just going to sit over here and point and laugh at Rudy -- because he and his party will not leave my family alone, and any questions about why his adult children want nothing to do with him are perfectly legit in the environment his party helped create.
But, back to Craig. What bugs me the most about the Larry Craig tearoom scandal (google it) is that a sitting U.S. Senator managed to plead guilty to a crime without any of our esteemed national media noticing. For months. Don't these yahoos know how to set Google News Alerts? There are only 100 Senators, after all -- considering that a Kennedy can't get a parking ticket without CNN going into 24-hour breaking news mode, it just strikes me as pathetically incompetent that the national media are so insulated and isolated at their little cocktail parties that this just slipped by them. Or, the news organizations have been so stripped of beat reporters that there's just no one responsible for, you know, national news-gathering. Anyway, that's what struck me when I first heard about it. The hypocrisy from the self-righteous party is par for the course and to be expected from modern Republicans, but for weeks and weeks to go by before the media pick up on a Senator being arrested and then pleading guilty to a 'scandalous' crime? What a joke.
<=> | Comments: 4 | in: Media Dysfunction / Republicans
August 18, 2007
Hate Must be Taught, After All
Hate must be taught, as the saying goes, and it's not just children who can be taught to hate. A little while ago Rick Perlstein wrote an all-too-familiar lament about his older relatives being fed a diet of viciousness and hate through avenues such as Fox News and Rush Limbaugh, and being taught to hate ... people like him.She was sure that beyond its threshold lay dragons: far-far-far leftists out to steal her Social Security; turbaned terrorists just itching to fly a jet into the First Wisconsin tower a few blocks to the south; quisling Democrats itching to help them do it; grandma-gutting criminal marauders just outside her door.A little while ago I was sharing a related lament with one of my relatives and something occurred to me. Not only do we live in one of most prosperous nation-states in one of the most prosperous times that has ever been, with luxuries inconceivable just a century or two ago, we also live in a time where the most sophisticated and most effective propaganda machines ever to be constructed are at work every minute of every day. Most of the time these machines are aimed at reinforcing capitalist myths and emptying wallets, but a significant sliver of this newly-developed propaganda capacity is in the service of an ideology focused on fostering divisiveness and contempt for others. So, while I am appalled at the unthinking repetition of insidious wingnut memes that I hear all too often, I'm also sympathetic. It is very difficult to resist the propaganda even when it's transparent ("buy this beer and beautiful blonde women will have sex with you"), and much more so when it is meant to fly under the radar (see Frank Luntz's entire life's work, for example) and masked in a veneer of patriotism.
I'd look out of [my grandmother's] eighth floor picture window, down at the scene she saw every day, half expecting to find that nightmare landscape before me. Nope: same as always, the brightly colored sailboats on Lake Michigan, kids and their parents feeding the ducks (Grandma used to take me to feed the ducks), happy, strolling Milwaukee couples—paradise. Where was she getting these fantasies?
One evening's visit, all became clear. She gestured at the blaring TV set. The excruciating grandma-volume was even more excruciating than usual, because she was visiting with her best TV friend. She told me how much she adored Bill O'Reilly. My wife and I cringed. Watching our latter-day Joe McCarthy on TV every night, she had learned, late in life—for this development was entirely new—how to hate her fellow Americans. I almost cried, because one of the people she was learning how to hate was me.
Sara over at Orcinus had more to say about the grandma-snatchers and a proposed solution:
Perlstein's article has prompted a flood of comments, here and elsewhere, from anguished progressives whose mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles, and grandparents once instilled them with their liberal values -- but are now estranged from their families and lost to the right-wing airwaves. It's as though, while we weren't looking, the body-snatchers snuck in through the pipe and made off with their votes, their brains, and (occasionally) their money.
[...] America's elderly have been frightened by media fearmongers for as long as there's been TV -- and possibly (for those familiar with Father Coughlin), for as long as there's been radio. This is a fine old tradition, the natural outcome when the elderly are left alone too many hours each day with only a box for company. But it's not inevitable. There are things we can do about it.
[...] Most of us are very cautious and circumspect about leaving our children's developing minds to the tender mercies of the media. Those of us who care about the elders in our families might be equally vigilant about their media diets as well. We do not have to take the political hijacking of our seniors lying down, or assume that's just the way it is. We just have to do what we do with our kids: make sure they've got consistent access to appealing, age-appropriate media that gives them hope, confidence, and truly balanced ways of seeing the world.
<=> | in: Federal Politics / General Musings / Media Dysfunction / Religion & Politics / Republicans / Technology
