The Liberal Politics & Current Events Book Club discussion
Reality-Based Chat. Speak!
Paul wrote: "Mary said, "We need a viable, youthful alternative to Hillary."I agree, but there's really not anyone who fits that bill in the Democratic Party right now. O'Malley couldn't even win reelection a..."
Paul, I completely agree with your perspective on this. I said some similar things in a post a week or so ago.
But the nasty Repub operatives are already out, trying to find new ways to annihilate her. The dust-up over HRC's emails is total BS but the right-wing conspiracy is already kicking in. The NY Times had a lead article this morning bemoaning HRC's terrible lapse though soft-pedaling Colin Powell's same practice. The Times is just feeding the beast.
But we liberals have a much bigger problem than 2016. Look around you. How deep is the bench of Democrats in your state? Not much? We don't have a good crew out here in Real America who can be groomed for national office. State governments all over the country are being swept by these alien beasts on the right, who are gerrymandering away our existence.
We must, must secure the Hispanic/Latino/Asian communities ASAP. They will soon be majorities in much of this country and I'm not feeling very confident that we can ensure they remain on the progressive side of the line. College-educated (or partially so) youth are a huge population that we must advocate for as well. All of these people will suffer the most from crushing debt, climate change, and the shifting politics against women, health, and well-being. I dread what might come out of the SCOTUS this summer.
If you haven't read Bob Herbert's book "Losing Our Way", I recommend it. A well-written indictment of our current state and where it will likely lead us.
I guess you can tell that my optimism is fading. Sorry for the doom and gloom. I'm re-reading Naomi Klein's book "This Changes Everything" and it isn't making things better. I hope to get a post written about that one day soon.
Darlene wrote: "Paul, I think you summed up perfectly what I have been struggling to find the words to say!! I believe I saw a poll recently in which a majority of people (or perhaps 'plurality' would be a better ..."Darlene, I am going to cling to your optimism, for a moment at least!
Dan wrote: "My article on trickle-down economics is featured on the front page of www.truth-out.org today:http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/29......"
Dan - It's a terrific (and infuriating) depiction of the utter cesspit of poverty and suffering this country has become. Everyone should read this, but for me, one of the real "money" quotes (in more senses than one) was this:
"...the result of declining wages is increasing poverty. Of the 34 countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which includes most of the countries in Europe, North and South America, Australia, New Zealand, Japan and South Korea, there are only four that have a higher percentage of their population in poverty than the United States: Chile, Mexico, Turkey and Israel."
Louis the 16th was less malevolent and predatory than the monstrous plutocrats who run this country. There's not one of them, nor any Republican member of Congress, who oughtn't to be in jail forever for economic crimes against humanity. And if I weren't a committed pacifist, I'd advocate much worse.
Gail wrote: " I guess you can tell that my optimism is fading. Sorry for the doom and gloom. I'm re-reading Naomi Klein's book "This Changes Everything" and it isn't making things better. I hope to get a post written about that one day soon. ..."I feel as you do, Gail, except that my optimism's not fading: it's non-existent. It's symptomatic that the only thing from which I derive comfort is the prospect of the completion of the Holocene extinction event -- because it will eliminate the unspeakable monsters who have caused this. And the complicit slack-jawed idiots who voted for them certainly deserve no better. It would be nice if liberals could find another planet in advance of the event, because this one is not fit to live on. The coalition of monsters and idiots who have cooperated in guaranteeing our extinction have rendered it that way.
Excuse me, but I'm in a bad mood this millennium.
Mark wrote: "Gail wrote: " I guess you can tell that my optimism is fading. Sorry for the doom and gloom. I'm re-reading Naomi Klein's book "This Changes Everything" and it isn't making things better. I hope to..."Mark, it is so hard to argue with you on this. I don't know if you have grandchildren, but I do, and their existence keeps me battling for change even though I have little hope that it matters. I look at them and feel such terror for their future that it takes my breath away. I'm not even sure we have 100 years left at the rate we're going.
If liberals have any part in this, and I think we do, it's that we haven't fought very hard ... I think we've fought harder for same sex marriage than for climate (not that the former isn't important ... I'll post on that in a minute). And none of us really wants to change our lifestyle. We want what we have now, just with a wind turbine or solar panels to fuel our consumptive habits. I'm guilty of this as well. We are all pretenders.
I'm absolutely convinced that without armed revolution around the world, nothing substantial will change. A global uprising won't happen either because we all keep hoping it will somehow, magically work out.
I don't want to capitulate to the forces of evil ... but the Borg keep whispering, "resistance is futile".
Darlene wrote: "You make some excellent points, Paul! But I was watching what was happening at CPAC and I have to say that Jeb Bush did not seem particularly popular! It seemed the crazies were all taking their sh..."Darlene, I agree with you. It's scary thinking of Gov. Walker being the nominee but then again, being less of a centrist, he'd be easier to defeat. It depends on who the Democrats select. I still don't think Hillary can win a general election because of all her past baggage that the Republicans will undoubtedly dredge up. It's a very long time util November, 2016 and I hope we have some good news about something and other topics to discuss between now and then.
We have a fairly deep bench in California, Gail, although some of them, like the former L.A. mayor, who is Latino, and the too-handsome and slick-looking lieutenant governor, have the Democratic Achilles heel, sexual scandals. Our part-black, part Asian female Attorney General is running for Barbara Boxer's seat, while former Mayor Antonio V. is sitting that race out, probably hoping that Feinstein, who is older than both Boxer and Mikulski, will retire, and he can take her seat in 2018. We also have many other youthful-looking diverse female candidates. For example, both my state senator and U.S. Representative are fairly young Asian females.If we're stuck with Hillary as the Democratic nominee, I assume that at least one of the Castro twins will be on her short list of Vice Presidential candidates. I love those Castro twins, but I guess the former Mayor, current cabinet member, is the one most likely to seek higher office.
Rachel's show is the only one that I regularly watch on MSNBC, and that's because she's on during the dinner hour in the West. Al Sharpton comes on at 3 p.m. out here, so I watch him only when race is a major issue in the news. I also like to hear his perspective when they are discussing the elections or Obama's State of the Union speeches because Chris Matthews can sometimes drive me crazy during those commentaries.
I think Rachel does a good job with the veterans, and I loved her reporting on the suppression of the vote in North Carolina. But she went on so long on that Christie bridgegate mess that I would turn her off and watch a movie or the Investigation Discovery Channel when she started blabbing about Christie. I was happy that Bill Maher called her on her obsession with Christie when she was on his HBO show. Ratings matter to all of these people. And being smart does not necessarily bring ratings. In fact, being smart (and not blonde when you're female, not to mention looking masculine) might hurt ratings.
My many experiences with educated women have made me suspicious of a certain type of successful woman. Rachel reminds me of some of those women. She is unfailingly polite, always cheerful and nice, always wondering if she got everything right, always modest. But just beneath all of that niceness is an occasional mean-spiritedness; watch her eyes, and you can see when she's being mean. I actually prefer in-your-face, aggressive people like both Clintons, although Bill O'Reilly, Hannity, and occasionally Chris M. go too far.
Keith, who was also always polite to his guests, was my favorite MSNBC commentator. I even wrote to him, telling him to bring back "The Worst Person In the World" segment because everyone with a brain knew it was a joke. I think he did a good job of mixing humor and serious news. But the man was clearly disturbed. He has problems on all of his jobs. He's been suspended from his latest job for something he said on his twitter account. When he was reading Thurber at the end of his MSNBC show not long before he left, I thought of something my mother said once when Robert Downey Junior was doing crazy things while taking drugs: "Where are his people?" I know his parents were sick and dying around that time, but I wondered if he had siblings or really close friends because the man was losing it.
Gail, Kansas really has gone back to the past, way back to around the nineteen twenties. What a mess!
NEWS OF THE DAY: Just to add to your collective furor over things political, here from the NY Times this afternoon: http://nyti.ms/1zRf6X2
Seriously? States think they can sanction this S*#t based on religious freedom? I'm almost speechless so maybe some of you can read it and find words. I'm just too pissed off.
I feel my last post was unduly depressing, so I've been trying to come up with a solution to the problem (of the existence of Republicans), and I think I may have hit upon something. Douglas Adams* actually proposed the idea, except that he populated his B-ark inappropriately, and merely got rid of people deemed "unproductive," rather than the ones who were actively pernicious.So here's what we need to do: convince the Republicans that the planet is about to be consumed by a "giant space goat." (This should be easy to do, since most of them are morons, and the rest are paranoid predators who closely resemble "giant space goats.") Then we build three gigantic "space arks" (two can actually be balsa wood fakes), and convince "the most important people" that it's imperative that we save them first. (All the narcissists and predators and idiots will naturally rush onto the ship.) And we'll promise faithfully to "follow behind" in their exodus to Epsilon Eridani (does anyone know if it has planets?), but must in the mean time cover their retreat by fighting the space goat. (We are so noble!)
I think this plan has a hopeful feel about it (and it's certainly less utterly deranged than politics in Kansas or Texas). :)
* The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Hi Mark, We just got back from a trip through Florida and the Gulf Coast including Mobile, Alabama. I think there are more threats in addition to Republicans. We (my husband and I) went into culture shock in Mobile seeing how much old Southern Culture still exists. This is a big country and we still have a lot to overcome.
Mary wrote: "We have a fairly deep bench in California, Gail, although some of them, like the former L.A. mayor, who is Latino, and the too-handsome and slick-looking lieutenant governor, have the Democratic Ac..."Mary, one state is not a deep bench.... but at least there are a few in CA to choose from if we have to build a government.
I am not sure any of us can count on the American public (esp those in key states) to have brains enough to reject a Republican in 2016. Like Mark, I'd vote for anything with a pulse to keep the GOP from governing. On second thought, they don't need a pulse either ...just a good Wizard of Oz ... behind the curtain.
Gail wrote: "Mark wrote: "Gail wrote: " I guess you can tell that my optimism is fading. Sorry for the doom and gloom. I'm re-reading Naomi Klein's book "This Changes Everything" and it isn't making things bett..."Gail, I have no children, grandchildren (I suppose that's implicit, though), or family of any kind, but I spent my life teaching and I do have an emotional investment in humanity, and don't want to see it extinguished. I have to explain that I'm a chess player, though, and in chess, when you recognize an ineluctably losing position, you resign. It's incondign and slightly pathetic to persist in a manifestly hopeless game. But in chess, one can always begin another game. Human life on this planet is the only one we've got, and we cannot hit *reboot*. So even pursuing a "hail Mary" solution or just persisting cussedly in the face of seemingly inevitable defeat is not "incondign" or "pathetic:" it's actually very human, and the last thing that's "noble" about us.
My depression aside, I do want to see us try to fight this. Were it not for the existence of a global surveillance state that a priori precludes it, I might be advocating (albeit nonviolent) "revolution," as you've suggested. (We sort of tried that with "Occupy Wall Street," but the tree that falls in the forest that is systematically ignored by the corporatocratic media makes no noise. Ten million voices will make no noise, and even if I weren't a pacifist, I can immediately see that any form of more aggressive rebellion would instantly get a lot of people killed -- and only decent people).
So, Golgafrinchan arks aside, I really don't know what the solution is that might have that "hail Mary" chance of succeeding, but we ought all to be brainstorming furiously. Resistance may be futile, but we ought still to spit at the Borg and think about how to introduce a virus into their hive mind. Viral videos of damning admissions by plutocrats like Romney would be a good start, and we ought to be collecting more of them. Many more of them.
From Texas, there are obviously not many candidates, but Julian Castro, the former mayor of San Antonio and current HUD secretary, is young and dynamic. I think he'll have a great political career, and he's been frequently mentioned as a possible gubernatorial candidate. Sadly enough, he has a better chance of being president than governor of Texas for the near future. Wendy Davis fizzled out, so it's hard to say what her future holds, but I think with a better campaign staff, she could still be a forced to be reckoned with.Unfortunately, that's about it down here in the land of George W. Bush, Rick Perry and Tom DeLay.
Paul wrote: "From Texas, there are obviously not many candidates, but Julian Castro, the former mayor of San Antonio... sadly enough, he has a better chance of being president then governor of Texas for the near future,..."As a fellow Texan... er, person condemned geographically to be domiciled within the borders of Gilead, I feel compelled to affirm that no one has a chance of being elected "governor of Texas" who does not have cloven hooves and a tail. And I don't know how far the "near future"extends. The Republicans will do everything humanly possible to prevent Hispanics (and African-Americans, and students, and elderly people and poor people) from voting. I would be willing to bet the GDP of a large country that they already go through the registration lists, rigorously excising anyone with a Hispanic name. My guess is that they will next enact legislation to make it illegal to vote in Texas if you can read a sign in Spanish, are currently enrolled in any institution of higher education, or receive social security. They are probably purging people over 65 from the lists, too, if they have their birth dates.
Mark, people over 65 vote fairly strongly for Republicans. I don't know why, but they do. And, unfortunately, they also vote in higher percentages than other age groups. I think Republicans don't intentionally try to prevent the elderly from voting. They are targeting the blacks and Hispanics. Those few among the white elderly who may not be able to vote because of new voting restrictions are just "collateral damage" resulting from a bigger Republican strategy.
They already know that Hispanics vote in the lowest percentages of any ethnic group. So by making it even a little harder Republicans can reduce their impact even more.
On the other hand, blacks vote is almost exactly the same percentages as whites, and, for Republicans, it really makes sense to cut the vote down here by almost any means possible.
Dan wrote: "Mark, people over 65 vote fairly strongly for Republicans. I don't know why, but they do. And, unfortunately, they also vote in higher percentages than other age groups. I think Republicans don't..."
Dan, I did have a look at the statistics for elderly people and was shocked to discover that, although the percentage living in poverty increased by about 25% from 2005 to 2009 for those between 65 and 74, and 40% for those over 85*, and I would imagine things have worsened considerably since then (I don't know why I can't find more recent statistics), the official poverty rates for 2009 (9.4% and 10.7‰ in those two brackets) were much less bad than the experience of practically anyone I know would suggest (specifically, that people cannot afford to pay for Medicare supplemental, and have difficulty with food and electric bills and rent payments).
In any case, I don't doubt you're right that elderly people (even as many impoverished fundies and politically delusional people of all ages) will tend strongly to vote for politicians determined to cut their throats. It's frustrating, but it's undeniable, so I should have given it more thought. Though I suspect it varies somewhat by region, and Republicans would certainly want to suppress the votes of urban poor elderly people -- in the aggregate, they probably are viewed, as you say, as "collateral damage" of policies intended primarily to harm African-Americans and Hispanics. So mea culpa on that one. The policies (e.g., requiring driver's licenses as a form of identification) would certainly seem to affect elderly people disproportionately, but they probably aren't the primary target if they're skewing Republican.
* percentage increase in the percentages (e.g., a change from 6% to 9% would actually represent a 50% increase)
If we had not had the supplemental insurance my wife's cancer either would have gone untreated, or I would have had to rob a bank. Even selling all of our assets would not have covered the costs of her treatment. So that is something I will pay for even if I can't buy much else.Fortunately, I am not in that position because I have a couple of corporate pensions to go with SS. But things don't look good for the futures of other people since pensions have generally disappeared from the private sector, and Republicans are trying to kill them off in the public sector.
They used to say that the Baby Boomers would kill SS, but that isn't happening, and isn't going to happen. The biggest problem is increasing lifespan. SS was not structured to keep paying very many people into their 90s - and soon beyond that in fair numbers. So withholding rates are going to have to be increased and the cap has to be lifted.
Dan wrote: "If we had not had the supplemental insurance my wife's cancer either would have gone untreated, or I would have had to rob a bank. Even selling all of our assets would not have covered the costs of..."I live in Texas, which restricts options and allows gouging as much as possible, so my supplemental is $420/mo. I've held onto it up to now, but since I have limited resources, I'd rather eat. There are no assets for anyone to go after, in any case, and I take a very fatalistic view.
I think "Republicans are trying to kill them off" is a pretty good universal quantification over all things, benefits and people alike. And I'm one of those things.
Ouch. Aren't there enough retired people, and people nearing retirement in Texas to make a big deal about this?My supplemental (AARP/United Healthcare) is $180 and it has gone up quite a bit in the last couple of years. I have the top plan that covers everything Medicare doesn't cover, including all the co-pays.
When my wife and I first signed up for it, only about five years ago, the cost was a little over $200.00 for both of us. The increases in the Part D Rx plan and the AARP supplemental plan have exceeded by some margin the COLA of SS.
This is going to be a big problem over time for many.
Gail, I listed the California candidates because they are the ones I know, but I'm sure there are Democrats like them in other states and not just the blue ones since the Castro twins and Wendy Davis are from Texas. Remember that Obama came from the Illinois state legislature. Kerry gave him a platform at the 2004 convention, and four years later he became President. I hadn't heard of the Castro twins until the San Antonio Mayor took Obama's 2004 role at the 2012 convention. Wendy Davis, another state legislator, got some attention by taking a courageous stand. I believe there are plenty of Democrats ready to lead if they can find the spotlight or the spotlight can find them. But if we just give up and think only Hillary Clinton or Elizabeth Warren or whoever else the media is shoving down our throats can save us, then, yes, we will feel, and probably be, hopeless. And if we keep choosing Democratic candidates from political dynasties like that ridiculous Allison Grimes from my home state and Michelle Nunn from Georgia, then we will probably continue to lose elections that we should win. What do Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama have in common? Right. They were not from political dynasties. Neither was Reagan.Dan, is that AARP supplemental $180 a month? My mother and I have the one that costs $14.25 per month, but it pays mainly for hospital stays and is really a supplemental to a supplemental. We have another good supplemental insurance with a regional company that has no monthly payment. My Medicare is more expensive than hers because I make more money, but if she didn't have a relatively modest (although too large for her to be considered poor) savings, she would be eligible for a reduction in her monthly Medicare deduction. I think her SS raise gained her $6 more in her check this year. The poor seniors in blue state California not only are eligible for a supplemental income (SSI), but they get breaks on utility bills. My mother would qualify for those breaks, even with her savings, if she lived alone and actually paid utilities.
Let's face it, folks, the Republicans don't really care about the seniors. They know we will die soon anyway. Their targets are the people who voted for Obama. They not only want to suppress the votes of blacks and browns, they also want to kill them. Cops are not shooting unarmed seniors in the street and then blaming them for their own murders, are they? I said only partly in jest that if we elect Hillary Clinton President without first putting a white man in the White House, the cops might start shooting unarmed young white girls.
I have posted an excerpt from A Light Not of This World, the "Religion of Hell" speech made by the President following the terrorist attacks. It is posted with the book listing here on Goodreads. It also is posted on DailyKos.com at http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/03...and on my blog, www.danriker.blogspot.com
Dan - I don't want to put words in your mouth, so please correct me if I've said anything inaccurate about your book or your views.To the rest of the group - I have previously reviewed and strongly recommend Dan's book as an intelligent and captivating political thriller that contains these very compelling quotes:
"At the same time, he understood why anyone who believed in the Constitution, the rights of individuals guaranteed to Americans, would be greatly offended by what the FBI was doing. And it was more than that. If it was justified to sacrifice the freedom and rights of one individual for the greater good, where and when does it stop? Is there any point beyond which such actions no longer are justified?"
and this, from Marie, the conscience and the moral compass of the novel, "The point where it must be stopped is the point where it started. If it is allowed once, then it can be justified again. What have you fought for, almost been killed for? When does it cease to have any meaning? For our freedoms to have any meaning, they must be protected all the time, and for everyone."
I mention this because I feel I need to clarify that I personally believe that the "religion from hell" is rabid capitalism and the ideology of the Tea Party.
I also believe, as I've stated many times and am prepared elaborately to document, that 9/11 was a false-flag attack.
I don't believe Dan would concur with me on either point (certainly not on the second), but I think we both agree that inducing people to behave violently for the sake of ideological or religious beliefs is a bad thing for humanity, and Dan's fictional president also observes that "throughout history millions of people have died in wars" [thus engendered]. He states further that "Each of us must allow others to enjoy their freedom. And nowhere is it so important as it is with religion." Because Dan's post was brief, I don't want anyone to misconstrue his fictionally deployed inflammatory title of a speech as reflective of his views on religious tolerance (or mine). It belies the insistence on religious tolerance in the content of that speech.
I think Dan's condemnation of the violation of the rights of individual Americans for the sake of soi-disant "National Security" is a statement that needs to made repeatedly. We have used the direct translation of the German word, "Vaterland," to describe ourselves as "the Homeland." This is Nazism, in my view, as was our prosecution of two heinous and unnecessary wars.
Mark, I don't think the Tea Party would endorse what the president describes as the religion of hell. It is too close to some of their religious beliefs. They don't believe in freedom of religion, or separation of church and state, and neither does ISIS or al-Qaeda. Religious extremists of all kinds share similar attitudes and foremost among them is their belief that only they have the correct view and because it is the only correct view they have the absolute God-ordained right to impose it on others in every way imaginable.
And BTW, there is nothing economic, capitalistic, or otherwise, in the view of religious freedom as expressed by the president in the novel.
Dan wrote: "Mark, I don't think the Tea Party would endorse what the president describes as the religion of hell. It is too close to some of their religious beliefs. They don't believe in freedom of religion, ..."No, I agree with you completely. I was the one condemning Tea Party beliefs (which typically do involve fundamentalist religious extremism), but really I was using the word metaphorically to describe any set of beliefs not subject to inspection by reason. Extremists of all sorts do share that mindset, whether or not it involves theism, so I was attempting to say the same thing: that there was an equivalency.
Truthfully, because this group has a very large and diverse international subscription, I was concerned there might be a misinterpretation of your fictional president's views, and your own, by those who hadn't read the book and saw only that title, and was trying to avert any argument about that.
My feeling about the extremist form of Randian capitalist ideology pervading the right wing is that it is tantamount to a religion, so I was seeking to defuse any specific and unique reference for the phrase by invoking another example: I thought the ultimate intent of your "president" was to condemn extremism, no matter of what sort. I was really more concerned with perceptions, here.
Mark wrote: "Paul wrote: "From Texas, there are obviously not many candidates, but Julian Castro, the former mayor of San Antonio... sadly enough, he has a better chance of being president then governor of Texa..."How did Anne Richards get elected Governor?
Texas used to be a Democratic state - before desegregation and voting rights in the 1960s. Then, for a while, it was very competitive.I have been reading some demographic materials recently, especially some that have focused on mobility and concentration of people with similar views. It appears that when people move voluntarily, they tend to move to areas of the country where the prevailing values and political views are similar to their own. Consequently, even though there has been huge population growth in Texas, many of the people moving there from elsewhere in the U.S. are as conservative, if not more so, than the state.
Add to this that Texas also has a huge oil industry and a large electronics industry. People who work in those industries tend to be conservative.
The hope in Texas - where people of white European stock now are in the minority - is that more Hispanics and blacks will get registered to vote and that the Hispanics will start to vote in much higher percentages. In this past election, Hispanics had the lowest turnout of any ethnic group.
Dan wrote: "My article on trickle-down economics is featured on the front page of www.truth-out.org today:http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/29......"
Dan, Thank you for writing this fantastic article! I have taken the liberty of sharing it with a number of people on Facebook… those that would be interested in reading the truth, that is. I have to say that it made me feel a lot more sane to read some concrete proof of what I have been thinking since the economic catastrophe occurred. I mentioned to Mark in a message that I have felt as if I was living in a parallel universe… the media constantly cheering about how well the economy was doing but seeing in my own home and among people I know how difficult things still were…. especially when trying to put 2 kids through college and maintain some sort of living standard! It was a relief to look at the charts, graphs and statistics you provided! Your writing was clear, concise and made a lot of sense.. even to a person who does not possess a great deal of economic knowledge. Thanks again!
Thank you for the kind comments. They are appreciated!Best,
Dan Riker
Gail wrote: "Mark wrote: "Gail wrote: " I guess you can tell that my optimism is fading. Sorry for the doom and gloom. I'm re-reading Naomi Klein's book "This Changes Everything" and it isn't making things bett..."Gail, I don't have grandchildren.. not yet anyway; but I DO have 3 children who are young adults… two of them are in college now. You're right.. it is becoming very difficult to remain optimistic. I try for my kids' sake to be optimistic for them and to continue to encourage them. But I have to admit that I'm not FEELING that optimism… not often anyway. The truth is that even with an education, so many kids have such crushing debt that there is no way for them to really strike out on their own and start their lives. My kids are both engineering majors… which everyone says is the 'appropriate' field to get into. My son will graduate in 2 months with a degree in electrical engineering and we have been looking at what's out there. Yes, there do seem to be jobs but entry level jobs don't pay all that well. With the student loan debt and the high cost of housing, how are young people supposed to navigate this world that seems to have been set up just to push them back down? I don't mean to be complaining or whining… I still believe it is better to be educated than not. I just feel the urgency of trying to accomplish something that lifts these kids up and gives them something to hope and strive for.
Reporting from the State of Gilead -- I could not find on-line photos of billboards I pretty distinctly recall were put up locally (and in Spanish), but here are two references to a pretty standard Repub dirty trick, by means of which they seek actively to suppress Hispanic and African-American voting. My recollection is that they also distributed leaflets in Spanish and generally did everything possible to imply that even the relatives of Hispanic citizens who showed up at a polling place might be subject to INS scrutiny.http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2012/...
http://www.msnbc.com/politicsnation/d...
Here's some more general historical and current background from Salon:
http://www.salon.com/2014/10/23/gops_...
They may no longer bother with this, though. I believe that they've moved on more to tactics such as purging the registration lists of Hispanic names and disposing of votes from Hispanic precincts.
There should be massive legal pushback from Democrats, and the political gangsters hired to do these things ought to be imprisoned, as should Republican officials and politicians who are implicated, but of course, if lower court decisions ever go to The Supremes, I think we can reliably predict what they will have to say about it: ningún problema.
Racist incident at University of Oklahoma fraternity:University of Oklahoma SAE Fraternity Closed After Racist Video
(I feel impelled, at this point, to put forth some long-suppressed reactions.)
I spent most of my career teaching at a socially progressive liberal arts college that did not have fraternities or sororities (nor would the thought ever have been countenanced), but I did start out at a major state university, which had an abundance of both. The incident I best remember from my first year as a professor was that I entered the large auditorium in which I was teaching an intro class with an enrollment of about 400. On the linoleum-tiled expanse between the podium and the first row of seats, someone had painted a huge swastika. (It required a call from me to the president's office to have it removed, when my first request was ignored.) It turned out that one of the major fraternities had decided to paint them in various conspicuous places on campus as an ongoing campaign of harassment against a Jewish fraternity. Of course, this may also have been par for the course for a Southern university that had admitted its first black student in the 60's, and had, as of the time of my appointment, exactly zero female faculty members in the College of Engineering, and very few in the sciences, but I do not view this as only or primarily a problem with Southern universities of that era, though I was very glad to leave that school and migrate to one respectful both of teaching and of human dignity.
Personally, and some of you who have been members of fraternities or sororities may vehemently disagree, but I solicit your opinion -- I do not think incidents such as these are anomalies wholly at variance with the social norms of "Greek" culture, and by which officers and members of Alpha-Male-Alpha are typically shocked and appalled. My impression, rather, was that the feigned horror of national chapters on learning of these incidents (which were, at least in my days of teaching at that university, endemic) might more appropriately be compared to suggestions by the KKK that they don't *really* believe in murdering black people anymore (and they naturally reprehend the rare exception), or suggestions by extremist "pro-life" members of the Tea Party that they don't *really* approve of shooting abortion doctors or depriving women of healthcare: that really isn't their agenda at all, and the nine million seeming exceptions are just individual "rogue" incidents not reflective of their philosophy. Or suggestions by Republicans that they don't really want to enrich plutocrats and immiserate everybody else: it's an accident. I defy anyone to name me ten male Republican politicians (who actually graduated from universities), who were not members of fraternities.
The bottom line is this: institutions that are inherently exclusionary, that foster cliquishness and "old boy" (or "girl") networks, that foster contempt for minorities and those who are "other:" those institutions do not accidentally experience eruptions of racism that contravene their essential culture: that is their culture. Of course, fraternities and sororities are non-monolithic, and there will certainly be numerous exceptions, but groups founded on exclusion (of minorities, of people who are not socioeconomically privileged, of "those other people") are, I think, inherently disposed to behave in this way: and it's what feeds the increasingly ecomonically unequal and appallingly discriminatory society that we have. I've certainly known bright, caring and progressive people who joined fraternities and sororities while in college, but there are bright, caring and progressive people who emerge from all sorts of institutions. It doesn't validate the ethos of those institutions.
Okay... now I invite all ex-frats to beat up on me. (I certainly had an opportunity to "beat up" on many of your compatriots' GPA's for five years, so I suppose it's only fair. :))
Full disclosure: I have never belonged to a fraternity (I think their revulsion at the prospect of admitting a geek like me might almost have matched my revulsion at the prospect of being admitted), so I never applied. I therefore speak from outside the system with only a professor's observation of "Greek" behavior on one particular campus.
AS you know, I belonged to a fraternity at Johns Hopkins, and was president of it. Hopkins at that time was all-male and there was very little social life on campus. The dorms also were atrocious, as was the food. Some of that improved later when girls were admitted, but my daughter's freshman dorm room there was every bit as bad as mine - and her experience in the dorms was also pretty bad.So the fraternities provided most of the social life, and better places to live and eat. They also provided a means to get to know a lot more people and to make some friends. Two of my fraternity brothers became life-long friends, one of whom came to and spoke at my wife's memorial celebration. The other one was my best man at my wedding.
My fraternity officially was non-sectarian, but it primarily was Jewish. A big deal was made of me the goyim being pledged when I was a freshman. By the time I was president it was at least 50-50, but the truth is, we didn't pay any attention. I never recall any racism, but then Hopkins had virtually no blacks then. My fraternity was not socially exclusive. If it had been, I would not have gotten in. There were a couple at Hopkins that were.
Now quite a few years after I graduated, and after Hopkins went co-ed, an incident happened in my fraternity house involving a girl that resulted in that chapter being closed down, and the house sold. I never heard the details, but obviously it was something pretty bad. When I was living in the house, I recall at least one girl living with one of the guys in the house without any incident.
My experience with a fraternity was excellent, and I learned a great deal about leadership from being its president - a controversial president - that served me well later.
Dan wrote: "AS you know, I belonged to a fraternity at Johns Hopkins, and was president of it. Hopkins at that time was all-male and there was very little social life on campus. The dorms also were atrocious, ..."Dan - I'd actually forgotten about your mention of your unusual experience at Johns Hopkins, but I'd been thinking after I wrote my reaction to that article that I ought to have inserted an "ETA" concerning what I would characterize as "counter-fraternities," which is to say, fraternities for minorities disenfranchised by the "mainstream" ones. The incident at my university apparently occurred because of hostility on the part of one of the mainstream ones to a relatively newly-established Jewish one. I don't recall whether any African-American fraternities had even been able to get a foothold at that (Southern) university at that time, but they would certainly have been likely to have been subjected to harassment, if they had.
I would not expect a fraternity formed by a "shut-out" minority to be "exclusionary" in the same way, and yours was an extraordinary achievement in having popularized and mainstreamed a fraternity formed by outsiders -- probably reflective of your own unique leadership qualities, and hence perhaps sui generis. I wonder whether a member of a minority group would have been able to accomplish the reverse: infiltrate an "exclusive" fraternity, become its president, and effect so radical a shift that its membership would then be 50-50 (minority and non-minority). Johns Hopkins has rather an unusual character among prestigious, upper-tier universities, so I also don't know whether you would have been able to accomplish the same remarkable feat had you chosen to attend Harvard or Yale, instead. In any case, since apparently, even Johns Hopkins lacked a very significant black enrollment at that time, there would not have been the occasion for harassment of African-American fraternities, and it's impossible to say whether there would have been racist incidents there comparable to the one in Oklahoma. But Johns Hopkins is a very different place in quality and character from the University of Oklahoma, and Maryland a very different state from Oklahoma (which has more of the cultural characteristics of Texas and the South).
I had forgotten to address the problem of rape on campuses (which is certainly not confined to fraternities, but which is, by all academic accounts, fairly rampant therein). Since the college I taught at had only dorms and was primarily residential, the dorms could not be terrible or the food atrocious, or (lacking the prestige of Johns Hopkins) we'd rapidly have found ourselves absent students, but the dorms consisted of a great many small houses, and students did form life-long bonds of the sort you describe: I can recall two students of mine residing in the same dorm who formed a now-quite-well-known corporation. But this happened without a system in which any sort of exclusion obtained.
Of course, all of this involves comparisons across eras, across types of schools, across regions of the country and across coed versus non-coed institutions that make the comparisons really inappropriate in principle. On balance, whereas I think yours was a remarkable and positive experience (both for you and for the fraternity you transformed as its president), a wholly non-exclusionary model involving dorms (or private houses compelled to accept all applicants) would be beneficial to a greater degree in breaking down socioeconomic barriers. If students whose families had monetary and political clout with their universities did not have the option of avoiding dormitories, I also think the schools would be constrained to improve the quality of those dormitories (and their cuisine).
One of the traumatic socio-political events that I had to deal with during my not quite four years at Northwestern involved a white fraternity and some black male students. The fraternity brothers slapped a black female sophomore on the rear end, and a few black males retaliated by attacking the fraternity guys. The black males were suspended, which meant (this was 1969) they would probably end up in Vietnam, so some of the black students went on a hunger strike. I don't remember how that situation was resolved. I just know the strike ended after a week or so, and we all went back to trying to earn our degrees in an occasionally hostile environment. There are, of course, black fraternities and sororities. My 76-year-old cousin, a retired education administrator (assistant principal of a junior high in Rand Paul's "hood," Bowling Green, Kentucky) who attended a historically black college in Kentucky during the fifties, clearly loves his fraternity brothers because he sent me and my mother a picture of him with them, and he's always trying to hook our 71-year-old first cousin, who lives in Detroit, and me up with one of them (I assume the ones who are divorced or widowers), telling us how much property and money they have and how wonderful they are. Uh, no thanks, Cousin Ricardo.
I'm like Mark, less social and more anti-exclusionary. When the small number of black women at Northwestern in the late sixties established a chapter of one of the black sororities, they begged me to join, but I refused. Even when they explained why they needed me to join--to raise their overall GPA--and promised I wouldn't be hazed, I said, "Nope. I have a high GPA because I don't waste my time with foolish things like sororities." When I arrived at USC as a graduate student in 1972, I found they also had a chapter of a black sorority (maybe the same one). An undergraduate friend of mine pledged with Natalie Cole, who soon left to become a star. I think it's worth noting that in the 1970's blacks attending universities like Northwestern and USC still joined segregated fraternities and sororities, and at USC there was no house, at least on campus, for the black sorority. In fact, I also remember there being a black fraternity at Cal Poly Pomona in the eighties. However, when First Cousin Ricardo's grandson died tragically at 21 of a heart ailment in 2013, I observed his memorial service on YouTube and noticed that his fraternity brothers at the integrated Kentucky University that he attended were mostly white. So some things have changed even in that exclusionary world.
On another topic, I was all over social media yesterday asking the question the media didn't ask because they are so busy trying to make something out of the nothing that is Hillary's private e-mail account: Why weren't Bill and Hillary in Selma? Why did they let George and Laura slyly represent Jeb while he hung out in Iowa to avoid alienating his racist Republican base? My bad feeling about 2016 just keeps getting worse. But at least someone mentioned Martin O'Malley on the ABC Sunday show while making the point that we don't have an Obama waiting in the wings when Hillary blows it again.
I have just lambasted 47 Republican senators for being felons and traitors. Read it at http://tinyurl.com/oeswo7lor on my blog, www.danriker.blogspot.com
Dan - Thank you for that historically comprehensive explanation of the Logan Act, and your passionate and eloquent indictment of those 47 disloyal and reprehensible Republican senators, who should most certainly be indicted and prosecuted for their appalling and arguably treasonous act, whether or not it technically constitutes "treason" (though it's hard for me to see how it wouldn't). Flournoy, the Kentucky farmer who was indicted under the act in 1803, was never actually convicted, but since there is that precedent for indictment, this spectacularly egregious violation should certainly be pursued.
Afterthought: Of course, it goes without saying that five members of the current Supreme Court would ultimately issue a "get-out-of-jail-free card" to any Republican who had committed any crime ranging from serial murder to treason, to throwing heaps of babies into volcanoes... but the gesture should nevertheless be made.
The University of Oklahoma has apparently severed all ties with the local SAE chapter, will close the house itself... and "the students involved will have to make their own housing arrangements after that, Boren said at a Monday news conference, during which he declared: “We don’t provide student services for bigots.”*My question is: why are they still students?? Does teaching not constitute a "student service?" And how about the granting of diplomas? How about allowing the students to defile the university grounds with their feet, or the classrooms with their presence? I, personally, would have thrown any such "student" out of my class, and refused to teach as long as he were present. (I should mention that I did dismiss the class, and refused to teach in that auditorium, until the aforementioned swastika was removed, and I would look upon the presence of any of the "students" from that chapter of SAE (Supremely Aryan Excrescences?) in a similar light -- as desecrating the classroom by their presence.)
* http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/gr...
Mary wrote: " Why weren't Bill and Hillary in Selma? Why did they let George and Laura slyly represent Jeb while he hung out in Iowa to avoid alienating his racist Republican base? My bad feeling about 2016 just keeps getting worse. But at least someone mentioned Martin O'Malley on the ABC Sunday show while making the point that we don't have an Obama waiting in the wings when Hillary blows it again.Mary - I wondered that, too, about their conspicuous absence in Selma, and I partake of the same "bad feeling" about 2016. It's encouraging to hear that O'Malley was (finally!) mentioned by someone in the MSM (I'm going to try to check the transcript, if it's available, to find out by whom, because I'm wondering why that person didn't get the "ignore O'Malley" memo), but it seems increasingly clear that the participants in the forthcoming Kabuki drama have already been determined. I'd fight hard for Hillary in the general election, given the alternative, but I can't imagine that the majority of other progressives would feel impassioned about her (or even necessarily impelled to turn out), and I'd like to "fight hard" to see that the nomination goes to someone else... Warren, O'Malley or some other actual progressive. I think Hillary fails to inspire even the enthusiasm of moderates and independents.
Lawrence O'Donnell has been very hard on Hillary over this email thing, but maybe that shows that she doesn't have deep support. A couple of major mistakes and it could be tough going for her. I saw a post the other day that said something to this effect: "Remember how we all used to hate Hillary?" and whether those memories might start coming back. Very clever, but also maybe very true.
Dan wrote: "Lawrence O'Donnell has been very hard on Hillary over this email thing, but maybe that shows that she doesn't have deep support. A couple of major mistakes and it could be tough going for her. I s..."
I think it is true, Dan, and Hillary's support is not deep. Her nomination is merely perceived as ineluctable, in part because that perception has been thrust upon us unremittingly by media sources, but also in part because of the (correctly) perceived dynastic character of the American political class. Hillary fails to arouse enthusiasm from many of us significantly to the left of center... because she isn't. She's fine on social issues (except the essential one of the increasing immiseration and obliteration of the middle class borne of NAFTA and outsourcing), but she's an unambiguous hawk on matters of "national defense."
She's phenomenally bright, and has been an exceptionally competent Secretary of State, but her politics are liberal (in the aggregate) only relative to the hopelessly and perniciously regressive ones of the Republicans. I reiterate: I'll support her to the mat against any Republican, and I really would like to see a female president -- but I'd rather it were Elizabeth Warren, and in a less dystopian world wherein he wouldn't automatically be unelectable, my candidate of preference would be Bernie Sanders. But in the real world, I'd also prefer O'Malley and some others who've been mentioned here. I do think we need to be pragmatic, but as the early attacks on Hillary demonstrate, I don't think it's necessarily the case that she's inherently more electable than Warren or O'Malley -- given sufficient financial support for either of those. Because they lack Hillary's baggage, and their positions are much more congenial to the Democratic base -- and, in particular, those likely to become active in "getting out the vote."
I liked your criticism of those 47 Senators, Dan, but I added a comment about the source of their recklessness. There is a direct connection between the fraternity scandal and the "treason" scandal, and that connection is that vile form of dementia called racism. I keep reminding people how we behaved when our country was attacked in 2001. We all rallied around the Commander-in-Thief Bush, and that included Gore. But whenever an American is attacked or killed with Obama as President, he's criticized. He's called weak (I call it the continued castration of the black male) by the media and the Republicans, and of course that hurts him with foreign leaders like Putin and the prime minister of Israel. Now I'm sure McCain, who has an adopted black child, and those other Senators would swear that they are not racist, and for McCain, the problem isn't just race but jealousy; he hates Bush too because Bush beat him in 2000. But his hatred for Obama is deeper because of race. I was talking to a liberal white woman Saturday about how we were missing Obama's speech (I left in the middle because I had errands to run, and I thought the speech should have been shorter under the circumstances, which called for a brief Gettysburg type address that allowed the powerful symbolism to carry the day); she said that she always read his speeches because she didn't like his voice. My skin crawled, and I think she saw something in my eyes that scared her. I was remembering how she (a usually vivacious, almost too friendly woman) had iced me one day when we met in the English Department mail room. I couldn't figure out why she was giving me the cold shoulder since we were friends and allies, but I was told by someone else a few days later that her son had been beaten by a couple of black boys at the local high school. Now I don't even have children, but she was mad at me because some black children whom I didn't know hurt her child. If I had confronted that woman about her racism, I'm sure she would have denied that she was acting cold and swore that she treated all people the same. I outed another surprised-to-be-racist woman who was probably in her twenties at the time when I was supervising the writing tutors. She was their supervisor in the Tutoring Center and would call me when a rogue tutor needed to be fired or chastised. I saw this woman as too easy on the tutors, but during one tutor meeting, some tutors were complaining about her bad attitude. When I called her to see what was going on, she said, "Well, Lisa . . ." Lisa was the new black tutor that I had recruited. When I told her that Lisa hadn't complained, she said, "Well, Lily. . ." Lily was the Korean-American student that I had recently hired. When I said that Lily had complained but so had some of the white tutors, she realized that she had given herself away and soon left the job. I don't think this woman recognized why she was suddenly irritated with the tutors until I drew her attention to the races of those two new tutors. All of the other tutors were white.One good test for racism is to see how we respond to people of a certain group when we are angry at one person from that group. Through most of the aughts, Arnold S. was my governor, and GWB was my President. I couldn't stand either one of them, but I didn't dislike other white people or other white men or even other white male baby boomers because I disliked them. In fact, some of my favorite Arnold and Bush-bashing partners were white male baby boomers. But I've seen hatred toward all black people grow because some white folks don't like this half-black President. That's how racism works in the 21st Century.
Mary, it all begins at home. How children are raised and how they are introduced to people who are different makes all the difference. If white children grow up in a home where the n word is used, and where racist comments are made, or there is overt hostility to blacks, most of them are going to have the same feelings. However, if none of that is experienced at home, then the children are more likely not to feel hostility, or uncomfortable around blacks. There was a recent study of racist attitudes in the "black belt" in the South - the area that stretches from Louisiana to South Carolina where there was the greatest concentration of cotton plantations and slavery before the Civil War. The study showed that racism is extremely high among whites in those areas today with attitudes that are almost the same as they were before the Civil War. It is almost as if, like the whites before the Civil War, that they fear what will happen to them if blacks ever really get free. It is combination of racism, guilt and fear and it keeps getting regenerated in those areas.
It is truly sad that so much racism exists. I was one of those who thought that Obama's election showed racism had declined. Instead, it ignited racism, some of it latent, and some of it open only among friends until now when it has become more acceptable in many circles.
There is no explanation for the enormous hostility to Obama other than racism. There is no objective reason based on his performance, or his personality, for people to be so hostile to him. Disappointed, yes, but not hostile! It is emotional and psychological and so embedded that it is going to take generations for it to subside.
And I think we are about to find that sexism isn't dead, either. I think if a woman is elected President, we will see some of the same kinds of treatment. I don't think it will be so visceral and so vicious, but it will be there.
Dan wrote: "Lawrence O'Donnell has been very hard on Hillary over this email thing, but maybe that shows that she doesn't have deep support. A couple of major mistakes and it could be tough going for her."Definitely not deep. I know there are people who really like her because I keep reading about them, but at least for my part, I'd be a "lesser of the evils" voter, mainly because, as I've mentioned before, the balance of the Supreme Court hangs on whether the next president is a Republican or a Democrat — and given the polarization of both the court itself and the process to get onto it, even a milquetoast, center-left, bank-beholden Democrat like Hillary would likely nominate someone well to the left of the current swing vote, Anthony Kennedy, even if they were more conservative than the Notorious RBG or Breyer.
This raises an interesting question for the group, which I've discussed with friends on Facebook before: What is everyone's position on third-party voting, whether as a protest against the establishment candidates or as a principled statement of agreement? My opinion is that it's a better idea in concept, but in a bipartisan system, pragmatism demands voting for the candidate with whom you agree most between the two with the best chance of winning. As a liberal, imo, a throwaway vote for a third-party candidate is in effect a vote for the Republican in the race since the system, like it or not, is set up as a zero-sum game between Republicans and Democrats, and the former will gladly accept the effects of depriving the latter of a vote.
What the 47 Republican Senators did was totally beyond the pale. It was totally outrageous and I agree with Mary that it had to be motivated by racism.
Paul, maybe because it took so much for people like me to be able to vote, and I'm part of that group who wasn't able to vote for Humphrey in 1968 when I was 19 because the law allowing people to vote at 18 hadn't passed yet, I usually don't "waste" my vote. I voted for Jesse Jackson in 1984 and 88, but that was in the primaries, and it was before GW Bush made me realize how much damage one President could do. In 2004 I didn't even think about voting for Al Sharpton. So I say we hold our noses and vote for Clinton, Webb, or whoever gets through this process and hope the less committed voters will show up and vote with us in enough numbers that the Republicans can't steal the White House.Dan, babies notice differences in color; I know because I had a cute blonde one-year old, who had clearly never seen a person as dark as me, try to rub my skin as if I was dirty. I thought she was hilarious, but when I looked around at her mother and my other white colleagues so that we could all laugh together, they pretended they didn't notice what she was doing. I keep telling everyone that we have to stop pretending to be colorblind and acting as if race doesn't matter. We must admit that we all judge people that we don't know by the way they look and sound, not just their race and gender, but height, weight, clothing, tone/cadence of voice, accent, dialect, facial expression, etc. Once we know that, then we can catch ourselves when we are stereotyping. I caught myself thinking that a woman I was talking to on the telephone was young, blonde, and not too smart just because she had a high-pitched voice.
Like you, I thought the election of Obama meant we had passed some milestone, that we may actually have overcome centuries of racism. But we were all naïve; we forgot our history. There is always a backlash to progress; Jim Crow was the backlash to Reconstruction. I laugh at myself when I think about how my only fear in 2008 was that "the brother" as I called him would be assassinated, and blacks would riot. What a fool I was!
Did anyone see Hillary's press conference? I thought at first she was going to handle it well because she tried to pivot to the 47 Senators' letter, but the news media wouldn't let her make that pivot. Her answers to the questions were repetitive, and her facial expressions were generally kind of obnoxious. Hillary is not good in these situations. She's tough, so she can take the heat, but her annoyance shows on her face (I can't talk because I'm told by students that I have some really mean looks). My favorite Hillary moment in the 2008 campaign was when the usually kind former ABC anchor Charles Whatever His Last Name Was (I think he was originally from Evanston, Lisa) told her she wasn't as likable as Obama. Some women (and Boehner) might have cried, but Hillary said somewhat humorously, "Well, that hurts my feelings." And when Obama said in one of his worse 2008 moments, "You're likable enough," she did this kind of comic "ha, ha" head toss. I thought it was the right response because the question/comment was foolish. They weren't running for Ms. or Mr. America, and they weren't pledging a sorority or fraternity, they were running for President of the U.S. I think Hillary has a low tolerance for b.s., which she can sometimes hide with a clever response, but at other times her impatience and contempt show. It's going to be a long campaign.
Paul wrote: "Dan What is everyone's position on third-party voting, whether as a protest against the establishment candidates or as a principled statement of agreement? My opinion is that it's a better idea in concept, but in a bipartisan system, pragmatism demands voting for the candidate with whom you agree most between the two with the best chance of winning. As a liberal, imo, a throwaway vote for a third-party candidate is in effect a vote for the Republican in the race since the system, like it or not, is set up as a zero-sum game between Republicans and Democrats, and the former will gladly accept the effects of depriving the latter of a vote..."I could not more profoundly agree. I will never forgive Nader for his act of perfidy and egomania that facilitated GWB's theft of the election in 2000. Now, since I do not believe there are any lengths to which the Republicans would not have gone (and they did go to the lengths of suborning the intervention of SCOTUS) to consummate that electoral heist, it might not have mattered even if Nader had stayed out, but he certainly did make it immeasurably easier for the Republican thieves to prevail, and I'd categorically oppose the creation of any third-party candidacy that might draw votes from Democrats. (If, on the other hand -- though the Republicans would squash it like a bug -- any especially psychotic element of their existing constituency wanted to run a third-party candidate -- say, on the "We Love SAE Racists" ticket -- then I'd love to see it and would enthusiastically applaud that racism-splitting effort :)).
Speaking of which, it develops that the University of Oklahoma has decided that it's adequate to expel two "ringleaders," but naturally, all the other participants in that outrageous act were merely loyal Nazis covered by the Nuremberg Defense, and are thus exempt from expulsion, and WTF?? At my college, students were sometimes expelled for the relatively inconsequential act of recidivist cheating, and would most certainly have been expelled for any such morally repellent act as those SAE students were culpable of. No one worried about "legal exposure," and I really find that an unconvincing pretext for Boren's failure to expel the lot of them.
Here is another article by me, published on my blogs and on DailyKos: "What would it be like to have a war with Iran? Obscenely expensive in cash and lives"
http://tinyurl.com/qd7rta6
Mark, I probably am one of the few progressives who doesn't believe the 2000 election was stolen. I followed virtually every minute of the coverage of the vote count and the court battles, and I read the entire Supreme Court opinion the night it came out. The Democrats blew it in Florida. The state's vote counting system was awful and the Democrats were incompetent in managing it. They also didn't get their voters out and Bush did get his out. The Court's opinion (Renquist's) actually made sense. I said that to Renquist when my wife and I met him at a book signing he was doing. He just smiled and signed our books.
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And Darlene wrote: "Gail, I followed the Kansas governor's race with great interest. The polls that I saw leading right up to election day showed Brownback behind consistently."
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Mark, it isn't illegal to teach evolution now, but for awhile the state Board of Education banned it from the curriculum. No one got jailed... but it certainly put a crimp in science teaching. A new BOE fixed that but all science is constantly under assault here. The legislature is populated with Koch-funded climate deniers and they are killing every environmental reg they can possibly kill as well as education.
The latest is a proposed bill that prevents anyone who is a teacher or related to a teacher from running for any board of education seat anywhere in the state. So let's assume Mark lives in Wichita and is a teacher. He wouldn't be allowed to run for a board seat. If his sister lives in Kansas City, and is NOT a teacher, she couldn't run either because her brother is a teacher on the other side of the state. This bill is actually up for consideration and has a good chance of getting to the floor. I suspect if it makes it that far, it very well might become law. On and on it goes. It's as if the Republicans want to make sure that only morons can hold office and vote. Each day it gets more demoralizing here.
Darlene, Paul Davis' loss was a big blow to many of us. The autopsy has been inconclusive but certainly turn-out became a problem. We were crappy at mobilizing Hispanic voters. Youth didn't show up much. We focused on one issue -- education -- and that didn't carry the day. Quite honestly, I think our Democratic Party operatives and leadership did a crappy job ... many younger politicos in particular felt that. We need a party overhaul but even then, I'm not sure if we have much of a chance. Koch lives here in Wichita and they fund all but a few legislators so they vote exactly as instructed.
As an environmental activist, I'm increasing convinced that there is no hope for anything progressive or enlightened happening here. Or at least not soon enough to matter. We are going broke and heading into what I think is a death spiral. Without revenue, we can't fund schools or anything else. So kids get a crappier education every year. Religion permeates politics here as well. It makes it hard for a smart, Jewish, near-socialist, liberal woman to find a date, I can tell you that for sure! I'm not James Carville (who I confess I think is crazy to be married to Mary Matlin, but that is a post for another day!).
Oh, and just to add to the week's news here, fracking is now moving into my county. Great. At least we'll have something to gather around with our signs to protest in futility.
The good news? The sun is out and next week will be in the 60s (which is terribly wrong, but a delight to think about anyway).