This one ended with a burp. The debate about which brew would best give President Obama Joe Six-Pack cred in his White House beer op with Harvard’s town-and-gown antagonists hit the front page of The Wall Street Journal. Had Obama picked a brand evoking an elitist whiff of John Kerry — Stella Artois, perhaps? — we’d have another week of coverage dissecting his biggest political gaffe since rolling a gutter ball at a Pennsylvania bowling alley.
It’s also stupid to look at Harvard as a paradigm of anything, race included. If there was a teachable moment in this incident, it could be found in how some powerful white people well beyond Cambridge responded to it. That reaction is merely the latest example of how the inexorable transformation of America into a white-minority country in some 30 years — by 2042 in the latest Census Bureau estimate — is causing serious jitters, if not panic, in some white establishments.
Ground zero for this hysteria is Fox News, [...]
What provokes their angry and nonsensical cries of racism is sheer desperation: an entire country is changing faster than these white guys bargained for. [...]
Obama’s election, far from alleviating paranoia in the white fringe, has only compounded it. There is no purer expression of this animus than to claim that Obama is literally not an American — or, as Sarah Palin would have it, not a “real American.” The birth-certificate canard is just the latest version of those campaign-year attempts to strip Obama of his American identity with faux controversies over flag pins, the Pledge of Allegiance and his middle name. Last summer, Cokie Roberts of ABC News even faulted him for taking a vacation in his home state of Hawaii, which she described as a “foreign, exotic place,” in contrast to her proposed choice of Myrtle Beach, S.C., in the real America of Dixie.
“Myrtle Beach is no longer the location for two long-running motorcycle events. After many years, our residents grew weary of three weeks of noise and traffic congestion each May, and they asked City Council to end the events. As a result, the Harley-Davidson Dealers Association Spring Rally and the Atlantic Beach Memorial Day Bikefest will not be held in Myrtle Beach,” Rhodes wrote.
To discourage bikers, the city has implemented stricter noise and muffler rules, will be enforcing a helmet law within Myrtle Beach itself, has established rules against large parties in parking lots and has tightened curfews on juveniles. Increased police DUI checkpoints have been mentioned as possible points for sound emission tests as well. All this with the disclaimer that Myrtle Beach is not “anti-biker or anti-motorcycle.”
[...] “The City of Myrtle Beach has initiated a media campaign designed to deter the good, law abiding motorcycle riders from coming to our area. The information being disseminated by the Grand Strand Chamber of Commerce and City of Myrtle Beach does not accurately portray the views of the people of Horry County. The majority of people and businesses look forward to you visiting and desperately rely on your visiting to make it through the year.”
It states that most of the businesses that cater to bikers are in Horry County, which has not adopted the new ordinances enacted by the city of Myrtle Beach. The Harley dealer will soon have maps of the area and routes to avoid Myrtle Beach up on its site. [...]
As Eugene Robinson of The Washington Post and Helene Cooper of The Times have pointed out, a lot of today’s variation on the theme is class-oriented. Some whites habituated to a monopoly on the upper reaches of American power just can’t adjust to the reality that Obama, Sotomayor, Oprah Winfrey and countless others are now at the very pinnacle, and that they might sometimes side with each other just as their white counterparts do. Threatened white elites try to mask their own anxieties by patronizingly adopting working-class whites as their pet political surrogates — Joe the Plumber, New Haven firemen, a Cambridge police officer. Call it Village People populism.
Sometimes the most revealing expressions of this resentment emerge in juvenile asides — Bill Kristol (on The Weekly Standard’s blog) ridiculing Gates for writing a flowery travel magazine article about his privileged vacation home of Martha’s Vineyard, or Heather MacDonald (in National Review) mocking Gates as a “limousine liberal” for his supposedly hypocritical admission that he has a “regular car service” and a “regular driver” to fetch him at the airport. Who does Henry Louis Gates Jr. think he is, William F. Buckley Jr.?
The one lesson that everyone took away from the latest “national conversation about race” is the same one we’ve taken away from every other “national conversation” in the past couple of years. America has not transcended race. America is not postracial. So we can all say that again. But it must also be said that we’re just at the start of what may be a 30-year struggle. Beer won’t cool the fury of those who can’t accept the reality that America’s racial profile will no longer reflect their own.
Reform? Why do we need health-care reform? Everything is just fine the way it is.
Go ahead, shoot me. I like the status quo on health care in the United States. I've got health insurance and I don't give a damn about the 47 million suckers who don't. Obama and Congress must be stopped. No bill! I'm better off the way things are.
I'm with that woman who wrote the president complaining about "socialized medicine" and added: "Now keep your hands off my Medicare." That's the spirit!
I had cancer a few years ago. I like the fact that if I lose my job, I won't be able to get any insurance because of my illness. It reminds me of my homeowners' insurance, which gets canceled after a break-in. I like the choice I'd face if, God forbid, the cancer recurs—sell my house to pay for the hundreds of thousands of dollars in treatment, or die. That's what you call a "post-existing condition."
And how could the supporters of these reform bills believe in anything as stupid as a "public option"? Do they really believe that the health-insurance cartel deserves a little competition to keep them honest? Back in the day, they had a word for competition. A bad word. They called it capitalism. FedEx versus the U.S. Postal Service, CNN versus PBS—just because it's government-backed doesn't mean you can't compete against it. If they believed in capitalism, the insurance companies would join the fray and compete.
I'm glad they don't. I prefer the status quo, where the for-profit insurance companies suck at the teat of the federal government. Corporate welfare's what we've got, and it's a damn good system. Through a wonderful program called Medicare Advantage, the insurance companies receive hundreds of billions of dollars in fees to administer a program that the government is already running. Don't touch that baby. You'd be messing with the handiwork of some fine lobbyists.
Marines from 2/7 Golf company find pot fields :) Go Marines!
Dancing with Lt. Brewster in Farah, Afghanistan.
Keep your California raisins, babydoll. Great wine, pot, avocadoes, sodomy, artichokes? Now you're talking a new state motto.
...
The disconnect from professed Christians on the torture "debate" is particularly astounding. Given how central the crucifixion story is to Christianity, and that it depicts Jesus tortured and then executed in one of the most cruel methods ever devised, it's mind-boggling to see anyone claim that supporting torture and Christianity are compatible - or that Jesus would support waterboarding. According to Christian doctrine, Jesus' suffering redeemed him and the world - but it's not the Romans who Christians are supposed to emulate in the story! "Turn the other cheek," "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" and "As you have done to the least of my brethren, so have you done unto me" are hardly pro-torture slogans. But in the hearts and minds of movement conservatives, not even Churchill, Saint Ronnie or Jesus himself can compete with the comforting violence of Jack Bauer.
...
You don't have to worry about torture, the evils of the world or even Jesus Christ Himself. Ray McGovern examines the paradox of Institutional Christianity that does not practice or believe the teachings of Christ.
...
Sorry for the Out Of Proportion Stretch and Sinc, Linda Ronstadt & Emmylou Harris Gold Watch And Chain
Never underestimate the ability of a tiny fringe group of losers to ruin everything.
For the last couple of weeks, we've all been laughing heartily at the wacky antics of the "birthers" -- the far-right goofballs who claim Barack Obama wasn't really born in Hawaii and therefore the job of president goes to the runner-up, former Miss California Carrie Prejean.
And there's nothing anyone can do to convince these folks. You could hand them, in person, the original birth certificate and have a video of Obama emerging from the womb with Don Ho singing in the background ... and they still wouldn't believe it.
Which raises the question: Why, in this country, is it always the religious right that won't take anything on faith?
And once these stories get out there, they're hard to stamp out because our media do such a lousy job of speaking truth to stupid. Vietnam, Iraq and the Spanish-American War were all sold on lies that were unchallenged or even abetted by the media. Clinton got impeached and Kerry got destroyed in large part because the media didn't have the guts to say, "This is nonsense."
Lou Dobbs has been saying recently that people are asking a lot of questions about the birth certificate. Yes, the same people who want to know where the sun goes at night.
And Lou, you're their new king.
That's why it's so important that we the few, the proud, the reality-based attack this stuff before it has a chance to fester and spread. This isn't a case of Democrats versus Republicans. It's sentient beings versus the lizard people, and it is to them I offer this deal: I'll show you Obama's birth certificate when you show me Sarah Palin's high school diploma.
The much-loved Firefox Web browser reached a milestone this morning -- its billionth download.
The download counter (Wow! Looks like one a' them national debt counters! - G) rolled over within the last hour. Quite a feat for a browser that unlike Microsoft's Internet Explorer or Apple's Safari is run by a nonprofit organization with fewer than 250 employees. Despite its lack of big corporation backing -- or maybe partially because of that lack -- Firefox has become hugely popular worldwide.
But it couldn't have gotten there on good feelings alone. The free browser that debuted in 2004 consistently gets high marks for speed, efficiency, adaptability and user-friendliness.
House OKs $2 billion more for 'cash for clunkers'
"The American consumer has taken cash for clunkers on a test drive and . . . they want to continue this program," said Rep. Steve Israel (D-N.Y.), one of the sponsors of the original legislation.
A year after SLJ reported on the contentious dispute over a proposal to add a children’s room to the East Hampton Library in New York, the kids of the posh summer community are no closer to seeing it become a reality.
Library Director Dennis Fabiszak has said that the East Hampton Village Board of Zoning Appeals has expressed concern that an expanded children’s collection would lead to more library usage by those who live in the less affluent areas of Springs and Wainscott.
Late-night comics found a few things to laugh about in the racially charged arrest of a Harvard professor – once beer was added to the equation.
"Alcohol usually cools things off – have you noticed that?" CBS' David Letterman said on Tuesday night.
Letterman joked that Vice President Joe Biden has already been put to work buying a keg for the meeting.
"They'll come over, one beer will lead to two, two will lead to nine, next thing you know everyone will forget that they were ever mad at each other," he said. "They'll start doing Jaeger shots out of Betsy Ross' thimble. They'll make prank phone calls on the Red Phone. Someone will be like, `Let's TP the Capitol building!'"
Hughley doesn't believe the Gates incident was a case of racial profiling, and thought it wouldn't have escalated if the professor had known one of his neighbors had called the police. He also doesn't think it will be a lasting issue.
"If Al Sharpton ain't marching, then it ain't a big deal," he said.
Colbert noted that police had dropped charges on Gates even though "he committed the perfect crime, robbing his own home. Think about it. He knew exactly when he wouldn't be home."
Comedy Central also flew in Larry Wilmore from California, identified as the show's "senior black correspondent," for the most direct jokes at Gates' expense on late-night TV.
He showed a picture of the stocky professor and asked, "What's his black anthem? We shall overeat?"
Wilmore noted that Gates had said "yo mama" during his confrontation with Crowley.
"How many decades has he been holding that in?" Wilmore said. "Did he call him a jive turkey, too?"
Wilmore did have one thing in common with white comics: He couldn't resist a beer joke.
"Alcohol – that'll end well," he said. "Booze isn't how you resolve a racial conflict. It's how you start one."
"Of course, this could be trouble, because the last time Obama got a few beers in him, he bought General Motors." --Conan O'Brien
As you probably surmised, that's the array of malty, hoppy beverages sucked down by President Barack Obama, Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Cambridge police officer James Crowley at their meeting (the photo is inaccurate, although it's a lovely still life - and do they really make Obama/presidential seal coasters?). And guess who drank the faggy, sweet Blue Moon? Surely the effete President or the effeter Professor. Nope. Obama demonstrated his man o' the people cred with the Bud Light. Gates, honoring America's founders the same way Harvard frat boys do, drank a Sam Adams Light (Nothing 'light' about Gates' beer in the above photo. Darkest one there. Damn racist camera. . .G). (Why was it originally reported he drank a Red Stripe? Because it's from Jamaica, where a lot of black people live? Racist fucking media...) And the Belgian longneck was deep-throated by Sgt. Crowley. With a slice of orange. Biden drank kiddie beer.
No, the problems of race weren't solved at the White House biergarten. But, as they slurped down more and more suds, things got a bit randy, as Skip Gates asked Crowley if he'd like the slave experience just to, you know, understand oppression a bit more. With a knowing smirk, Crowley responded that if Gates had the chains, he had the wrists. "Why don't you two get a room?" Biden exclaimed. Obama rolled his eyes, walked away, having had enough of this bullshit distraction, and told the Secret Service to let the Professor and the Cop have a couple of hours in the Lincoln Bedroom, where Gates could continue the lesson.
VIDEO: Sen. Cornyn confuses China, India; calls India security threat
I have to quote John Aravosis:
That's okay, we often confuse Cornyn for a real Senator.
Hey remember a few months ago when Rush Limbaugh said he was moving out of the People's Republic of Manhattan because he was fed up with all the taxes and whatnot? Well, he's yet to leave our fair city!
...
July 31 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. government’s $1 billion “cash for clunkers” program to spur new car sales ran through the money six days after it began, Senator Debbie Stabenow said.
Stabenow, a Michigan Democrat, and other lawmakers called for an infusion of taxpayer money to subsidize more new-vehicle purchases in the effort to revive dealerships and automakers while getting older, less fuel-efficient vehicles off the road.
...
...
This is NOT a war zone,this is the United States of America and you selfish cock bites are munching on quail wings and caviar and telling 72% of the rest of us to suck it up and pay your cerebraly abscessed donors more than we ever have before.
...
"I'm on the side of conservatives getting back to core conservative values," said Mr. Vitter, Louisiana Republican and member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. "There are a lot of us from the South who hold those values, which I think the party is supposed to be about. We strayed from them in the past few years, and that's why we performed so badly in the national elections."