Posts Tagged ‘Joe Lieberman’
Closed Some Tabs Today Links
* The Humanities as Contradiction: Against the New Enclosures.
* Colleges Can’t — or Won’t — Track Where Ph.D.s Land Jobs. Should Disciplinary Associations?
* A couple recent novel recommendations, just because I’ve had a bit more time to read lately, and because it’s been a while: I enjoyed both The Freeze-Frame Revolution by Peter Watts and The Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee.
* I thought ranking the 5th through 20th Beatles was an especially good episode of Screw It, We’re Just Gonna Talk about the Beatles, too, while I’m in a recommendin’ mood.
* Calling all folks who have a conference paper or short piece they’re not sure what to do with. You’ve got a friend in the SFRA Review!
* Foundation #130 has been published.
* An Alternative to the Nobel Prize in Literature, Judged by You. And a deep dive into the ugly scandal that cancelled the Nobel prize.
* N.K. Jemisin’s first short story collection is coming this fall. And elsewhere on the Afrofuturism beat: Nnedi Okorafor will be writing Shuri.
* Claremont Graduate University closed its philosophy department and laid off the program’s two main tenured professors this summer, just a year after approving a promising master’s degree-only model for the department.
* Understanding the CV vs the cover letter.
* A lost Stanley Kubrick screenplay has apparently been found.
* The secret history of Marxist alien hunters.
* Tolkien: Maker of Middle-Earth. Inside J.R.R. Tolkien’s Notebooks, a Glimpse of the Master Philologist at Work. “Saint Tolkien”: Why This English Don Is on the Path to Sainthood.
* From Peter Frase: On the Politics of Basic Income.
* How Should Children’s Literature Deal with the Holocaust?
* Who Is Brett Kavanaugh? Inside the Right-Wing History of Trump’s Supreme Court Nominee. To Brett Kavanaugh and Donald Trump, Immigrants Have No Rights. Senators, Don’t Pretend You Don’t Know Where Kavanaugh Stands On Roe. Brett Kavanaugh’s Record on the Rule of Law Is Much Worse Than His Defenders Contend. Yes, Normal Republican Elites Are a Threat to Democracy.
INCREDIBLE.
Saw this at the National Portrait Gallery—titled “Behind the myth of benevolence,” by artists Guillermo Nicolas & Jim Foster. I’ll share this with my students. pic.twitter.com/Fkz657qBYw— KatherynRussellBrown (@KRussellBrown) July 16, 2018
* As local newsrooms shrink, college journalists fill in the gaps.
* White House Reviewing Plan to Relax Child Labor Laws.
* Trial runs for fascism are in full flow.
* Family Separations Are Still Happening Along The Border, As This Father’s Case Shows.
* I Know What Incarceration Does to Families. It Happened to Mine.
* Cleaning Toilets, Following Rules: A Migrant Child’s Days in Detention.
* Immigrant mothers are staging hunger strikes to demand calls with their separated children. Army abandons legal effort to expel immigrant soldier on path to citizenship. The Army as a whole, and every individual soldier involved, should be ashamed of itself for participating in this nonsense. Judge will temporarily halt deportations of reunited families. Sexual Assault Inside ICE Detention: 2 Survivors Tell Their Stories. After an ICE raid in Postville, Iowa. Two teens wait in Boston after being separated from their father at the border. The prison-industrial complex, ICE edition. Look who’s profiteering now.
* Most Trump Voters Say MS-13 Is A Threat To The Entire U.S.
* What Does It Mean to Abolish ICE?
* Trump and Putin: what we know is damning. It got worse.
Trump is about to meet with Putin for 90 minutes with no other Americans and hasn’t even come up with a perfunctory reason why
— Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) July 16, 2018
Imagine it’s 2012 and someone described to you everything we would know in 2018. Would this sound like a hazy, unclear state of affairs? Or would it sound like we actually knew more than enough — indeed, a terrifying amount?
— Ezra Klein (@ezraklein) July 16, 2018
the ridiculous obsession with the pee tape is people not wanting to realize that trump just agrees with putin. this isn’t a mystery
— alex (@betterbecoffee) July 17, 2018
* Meanwhile, House conservatives prep push to impeach Rosenstein.
* The borrowed kettle, war on poverty edition.
* Trump has said 1,340,330 words as president. They’re getting more dishonest, a Star study shows.
* As the GOP increasingly comes to resemble a personality cult, is there any red line—video tapes? DNA evidence? a war with Germany—President Trump could cross and lose party support? “Very doubtful,” say a dozen GOP members of Congress stuck hard behind the MAGA eight ball.
Whatever game-changing thing you think happened today, Republican voters won’t even hear about it, and wouldn’t care if they somehow did. Same as all the other times and all the other times to come.
— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) July 16, 2018
The real political question is whether Donald Trump will voluntarily exit the Presidency on January 20, 2025, or whether he will try to avoid this by amending or suspending the Constitution.
— Steven Shaviro (@shaviro) July 17, 2018
‘There Are Things That Exist Which Are Not Good,’ Says Obama In Stunning Rebuke Of Trump https://t.co/BTuJKbd0RO pic.twitter.com/6CuB2HcRX5
— The Onion (@TheOnion) July 17, 2018
Live from @JeffFlake's office. pic.twitter.com/Bxb1a4Oz3w
— Jason P. Woodbury (@jasonpwoodbury) July 16, 2018
* Records obtained by the Miami Herald suggest that during the tenure of former chief Raimundo Atesiano, the command staff pressured some officers into targeting random black people to clear cases.
* With last charges against J20 protestors dropped, defendants seek accountability for prosecutors.
* Nineteen tenants of 18 Kent Ave. in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, contend that Kushner Cos. tried to convert the majority of the 338 apartments in the building from rent-stabilized units to luxury condos starting in June 2015. To do so, Kushner’s firm harassed the rent-stabilized tenants with major construction all over the building, the lawsuit charges. The construction at the Austin Nichols House unleashed dangerous toxins into the air and caused a litany of issues, according to the legal filing. Rent-stabilized tenants allege Kushner Cos. harassed them.
* The woman in the #PlaneBae saga breaks her silence — she says she’s been ‘shamed, insulted, and harassed’ since the story went viral and asks for her privacy. Don’t stalk random strangers for clicks!
* Don’t feed the trolls, and other hideous lies: The mantra about the best way to respond to online abuse has only made it worse.
* E.U. Fines Google $5.1 Billion in Android Antitrust Case.
* The Weirdest and Most Wonderful Alternate Dimensions in the Marvel and DC Universes.
* Left Politics Can Win All Over the Country.
* In about 20 years, half the population will live in eight states.
* Something is up with Elon Musk. Keep your eye on it. Really!
It’s a DISCO spoiler but there’s actually a great brick joke in Discovery that ties in nicely here with regard to the Elon Musk worship @pefrase is talking about. #SFRA18 https://t.co/0WAZLAztgE
— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) July 2, 2018
* All class: MGM Preemptively Sues Victims of Las Vegas Mass Shooting.
* Handmaid’s Tale season two sounds like a real mess. A roller-coaster season – and its mind-boggling conclusion – have left Hulu’s flagship drama with nowhere to go.
* Mad as a Mars Hare as the first Vietnam War film.
* A new law makes it illegal to vote if you’re a Democrat. But critics say…
* Why Aren’t We Still Talking About Treasure Planet?
* Pushback against immunization laws leaves some California schools vulnerable to outbreaks.
* Autism and the tech industry. The World Doesn’t Bend for Disabled Kids (or Disabled Parents).
* Health Insurers Are Vacuuming Up Details About You — And It Could Raise Your Rates.
* Today in the charter school scam.
* Trump is so bad that presidency-ending scandals don’t even get any airtime.
* Could Ancient Humans Have Lived as Long as We Do?
* Wildfires In The U.S. Are Getting Bigger. Orcas of the Pacific Northwest Are Starving and Disappearing. The disturbing reason heat waves can kill people in cooler climates. How Climate Change in Bangladesh Impacts Women and Girls. Global warming could make India literally uninhabitable.
abdifference
the weird planet
planetary bodies
ghosts
the broken places
life after aftermath☝️
These are some of the concepts I theorize and use in these chapters. Some directly from the novels, some cobbled together from other scholarship, and some just made up.— Ben Robertson (@BenRobertson) July 14, 2018
* Labour HQ used Facebook ads to deceive Jeremy Corbyn during election campaign.
* Stop-and-Frisk Settlement in Milwaukee Lawsuit Is a Wakeup Call for Police Nationwide.
* “Sacha Baron Cohen Tricked Me Into Saying We Should Arm Preschoolers.”
* Why isn’t the liberal media focusing on the one good trip?
* Incompetence all the way down.
* Abortion is immoral, except when it comes to my mistress.
* In Praise of Incivility: The Appropriate Posture in a State of Emergency.
* Nintendo Labo Contest Winners Include A Solar-Powered Accordion And A Teapot Minigame.
* The Most Important Video Game on the Planet: How Fortnite became the Instagram of gaming.
* Disney will control about 40% of the annual box office if it buys Fox.
* Money is literally speech, but ‘Access to Literacy’ Is Not a Constitutional Right, Judge in Detroit Rules.
* I’m sure there’s a reason you’d set this story in the Victorian period that wasn’t about smuggling in sexist tropes under the sign of historical verisimilitude, but.
* Venmo’s “public by default” transactions reveal drug deals, breakups, more.
* We’ll never know what combination of incentives and forces and genuine beliefs are at play in one person’s shifting positions. And like I said, I welcome the change that is happening today. But I would be less than honest if I didn’t say that I was sometimes unsettled by it. Particularly when it’s unacknowledged.
* In this disorienting moment of hope, despair, and opportunity, it is this vision that must continue to glow, incandescent, as our guiding light. From the archives.
* Ocasio-Cortez’s Blueprint for a New Politics. More from the New Yorker. Making the right enemies.
Ask your next Uber/hail service driver what their life is like.
Many are teachers, or work retail, or have another job.
Unemployment isn’t the major problem for those folks.
It’s that, on one wage at 40 hours a week, they aren’t paid enough to live.
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@Ocasio2018) July 17, 2018
* Raising a child in a doomed world.
* The second civil war just got interesting.
* In Town With Little Water, Coca-Cola Is Everywhere. So Is Diabetes.
| ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄|
There is plenty of
hope, infinite hope,
but not for us.
|__________|
(__/) ||
(•ㅅ•) ||
/ づ#SignBunny— Jan Mieszkowski (@janmpdx) July 14, 2018
* An exciting opportunity to read your own kids’ memoir, today.
* Sorry guys, this one is my bad.
* And a plastic straw update: A Reason investigation reveals that the coffee giant’s new cold drink lids use more plastic than the old straw/lid combo. Well done, everyone!
Written by gerrycanavan
July 18, 2018 at 10:00 am
Posted in Look at what I found on the Internet
Tagged with #BlackLivesMatter, #J20, #MeToo, abolition, abortion, academia, academic jobs, actually existing journalism, Afrofuturism, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, aliens, America, antitrust, apocalypse, autism, Bangladesh, Barack Obama, Beatles, Black Panther, Blockbuster Video, border patrol, Brett Kavanaugh, Buffy, California, canonization, charter schools, child labor, citizenship, Civil War, Claremont Graduate University, class struggle, climate change, comics, cults, CVs, DC Comics, delicious Coca-Cola, democracy, Democrats, Department of Energy, deportations, Detroit, diabetes, disability, Disney, Donald Trump, ecology, Elon Musk, English departments, English majors, European Union, Facebook, fascism, film, films, Finland, Fortnite, Foundation, Founding Fathers, games, gig economy, girls, Google, guns, Haiti, health insurance, Helsinki, hope, I grow old, ice, immigration, incivility, India, Iowa, Isaac Asimov, Jared Kushner, Jeff Flake, Jeremy Corbyn, Joe Lieberman, Joss Whedon, juking the stats, Kafka, Labour Party, Las Vegas, lies and lying liars, life, literacy, longevity, Looney Tunes, Lord of the Rings, many worlds and alternate universes, Margaret Atwood, Marvel, Marvin the Martian, Marxism, mass incarceration, mass shooting, math, medicine, memory, MGM, Milwaukee, misogyny, MLA, monopolies, morally odious monsters, morally odious morons, mortality, MS-13, N.K. Jemisin, Nintendo, Nintendo Labo, Nintendo Switch, Nnedi Okorafor, Nobel Prize, nostalgia, novels, NRA, orcas, over-educated literary theory PhDs, parenting, Peter Frase, Peter Watts, philosophy, plastic, plastic straws, podcasts, police corruption, police violence, politics, portnormality, prison-industrial complex, profiteering, Putin, rape, rape culture, recycling, Republicans, Robert Mueller, Rod Rosenstein, Sacha Baron Cohen, saints, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, scams, science fiction, science fiction studies, screenplays, Screw It We're Just Gonna Talk About the Beatles, sex, sexism, sexual assault, SFRA, SFRA Review, slave resistance, social media, socialism, Stanley Kubrick, Star Trek, Star Trek: Discovery, Starbucks, stop-and-frisk, stress, student debt, superbugs, Supreme Court, surveillance society, teaching, television, the Anthropocene, the Army, the Constitution, the courts, The Freeze-Frame Revolution, The Handmaid's Tale, the humanities, the law, the Left, The Ninefox Gambit, The Robots of Dawn, the Senate, the truth is out there, the university in ruins, Tolkien, Treasure Planet, trolls, Twitter, Uber, UFOs, universal basic income, USSR, vaccination, Venmo, Vietnam, voting, war, war on education, war on poverty, whales, wildfires, Yoon Ha Lee
Thursday Links
* IQ ‘a myth,’ study says. You mean almost everybody who lived a hundred years ago wasn’t learning disabled by contemporary standards?
Among the study’s other findings:
• While aging has a detrimental effect on reasoning and short-term memory, it leaves verbal abilities “completely unimpaired.”
• Smoking has a negative impact on verbal abilities and short-term memory but does not affect reasoning skills.
• People who play video games performed “significantly better” in terms of both reasoning and short-term memory.
• Products that are advertised to improve brain function aren’t effective. “People who ‘brain-train’ are no better at any of these three aspects of intelligence than people who don’t,” Owen said.
* Big MetaFilter post on Chris Ware’s Building Stories.
* We need DNA tests before you can vote: Iowa’s GOP Election Official Has Found Only 6 Examples Of Voter Fraud Out Of 1.6 Million Votes Cast.
* Why Nate Silver is Not Just Wrong, but Maliciously Wrong.
* Joe Lieberman’s last act as a senator is surprisingly not all that malicious or destructive.
* Somewhere in Portland, there’s a very old building, and that very old building has a very, very old basement. An incredible basement, a video-game-level basement, a set-decorator’s dream basement.
* Dinosaur Comics creator’s Choose-your-own-adventure Hamlet beats all Kickstarter publishing records.
Written by gerrycanavan
December 20, 2012 at 9:34 am
Posted in Look at what I found on the Internet
Tagged with aging, basements, Building Stories, Choose Your Own Adventure, Chris Ware, comics, Dinosaur Comics, games, Hamlet, intelligence, Iowa, IQ, Jerry Seinfeld, Joe Lieberman, Kickstarter, material culture, materiality, models, Nate Silver, Portland, smoking, standup comedy, voter suppression, voting, Washington D.C.
Obama vs. The Left
Everyone’s talking about it. For any possible upside you basically have to stick to the win-by-losing stimulus hypothesis—so don’t read Krugman telling you it won’t work.
I guess today about wraps up the progressive portion of the Obama administration. Back in November 2008 I’d hoped Democrats had elected our Reagan—but it turns out Obama was just our Joe Lieberman.
UPDATE: And all for nothing?
Written by gerrycanavan
December 7, 2010 at 6:07 pm
Posted in Look at what I found on the Internet
Tagged with Barack Obama, Joe Lieberman, Krugman, politics, progressives, stimulus, taxes, the economy, you're no Ronald Reagan
Get Me Nick Fury
Joseph Lieberman To Found S.H.I.E.L.D. Not a hoax! Not an imaginary story!
Written by gerrycanavan
December 5, 2010 at 1:29 pm
Posted in Look at what I found on the Internet
Tagged with comics, Joe Lieberman, Julian Assange, Marvel, Nick Fury, S.H.I.E.L.D., Wikileaks
Official 2010 Prediction Thread
As usually is the case with these things I’m taking a much more optimistic tack than is properly reasonable, but here goes:
* Democrats take at least 5/7 of PA, CO, IL, WA, WV, AK, and NV. This is basically running the table of what’s left to them, but I think they can do it due to GOTV advantage, cell phone effect, under-the-radar surges, etc. (Deep down I really think they take all 7, but I want to hedge the optimism at least a little.)
* Republicans take WI, KY, and of course my beloved NC (sigh).
If I’m reading the FiveThirtyEight average right that puts the Dems at -6 in the Senate, 53 Senators, safely outside the Lieberman/Nelson betrayal threshold.
I think the House is probably lost, but not by as much as the worst polls suggest: call it Republicans +40. Bring on the shutdown, bring on impeachment, bring on the end of all good things.
Written by gerrycanavan
November 1, 2010 at 8:27 pm
Just Ridiculous
Robert Gibbs has already inartfully walked back his Kinsley gaffe that left critics of the Obama administration “ought to be drug-tested,” but he ought to be drug-tested should probably resign / be fired anyway. He’s the press secretary; his whole freaking job is to stay on-message. Screwing up like this is not okay.
More importantly, this White House needs to remember who its friends are. By my count the Left has fallen into line every time it has been asked, often against its better judgment. It’s the Joe Liebermans and Ben Nelsons of the party who have repeatedly and gleefully betrayed the White House when it mattered, not the dirty hippies…
* Glenn Greenwald: “The Democrats have been concerned about a lack of enthusiasm on the part of their base headed into the midterm elections. These sorts of rabid, caricatured, Fox-News-copying attacks on the Left will undoubtedly help generate more enthusiasm — more loud clapping — for the Democrats. I know I’m eager to go canvass and clap for Democrats after reading Gibbs’ noble, inspiring vision. If it were Gibbs’ goal to be as petulant and self-pitying as possible, what could he have done differently?”
* Chris Bowers: “Secondly, and more sadly, reaching out to the left by hating on it has a long, established tradition in Democratic politics. Many Democratic elected officials feel that reaching out to moderates and conservatives means bending over backward to show those voters that they share their views. However, many of those same elected officials consider left-wing outreach to be telling progressives to shut the fuck up and get in line. With outreach like that, it is probably no wonder that President Obama’s main problem with his approval rating right now is among self-identified liberals.”
* David Frum: “More proof of my longtime thesis, Repub pols fear the GOP base; Dem pols hate the Dem base.”
* John Cole: “Way to help the GOTV efforts, Gibbs. Asshole.”
Written by gerrycanavan
August 10, 2010 at 12:37 pm
Just Another Thursday Night Linkdump
* Bad news, grad students: Lack of sleep linked to early death.
* Joe Lieberman thinks he’s found a loophole in that silly Constitution thing: revoking the citizenship of suspected terrorists. It’s a great idea that has no possible downside and could never be abused.
* Oh, and Lieberman’s take on the Gulf of Mexico disaster is “Accidents happen.” What could possibly go wrong, that hasn’t already gone wrong, to convince these people that offshore drilling isn’t worth it?
* Democrats demoralized. I wonder why.
* Supreme Court Upholds Freedom Of Speech In Obscenity-Filled Ruling.
* Facebook doing everything wrong.
* The flooding in Nashville has now been declared a national emergency. The Big Picture has pictures of what’s happening there.
* Genetically engineered crops lead to genetically engineered weeds. Via MetaFilter.
* The FCC will reclassify broadband in order to preserve its ability to protect net neutrality.
* Natural Catalogue (in Alphabetic Order). Photos from Agata Marzecova.
* Eric Cantor booed by Heritage Foundation audience for refusing to name Obama a “domestic enemy.” The lunatics are running the asylum.
* Matt Yglesias covers some important bipartisanship cooperation from the U.S. Senate.
* Oil disaster update: Less than a week after British Petroleum’s Deepwater Horizon drilling platform exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, killing 11 workers and unleashing what could be the worst industrial environmental disaster in U.S. history, the company announced more than $6 billion in profits for the first quarter of 2010, more than doubling profits from the same period the year before. Robert F. Kennedy explores the Cheney connection, while Nicole Allan blames Halliburton.
* Hope: The Tucson and Flagstaff city councils voted Tuesday to sue Arizona over its tough new immigration law, citing concerns about enforcement costs and negative effects on the state’s tourism industry.
* The Darjeeling Limited coming to the Criterion Collection.
* Tough but fair: Goran Tunjic carded for fatal heart attack during soccer game.
* And your feel-good/feel-terrible story of the day: Local boy with cancer turns into a superhero for a day.
Written by gerrycanavan
May 6, 2010 at 9:46 pm
Posted in Look at what I found on the Internet
Tagged with America, Arizona, art, Barack Obama, BP, cancer, capitalism, Cheney, Darjeeling Limited, death, Deepwater Horizon, Democrats, disaster, douchebags of liberty, ecology, Facebook, film, floods, food, free speech, genetically modified foods, graduate student life, Gulf of Mexico, Halliburton, hope, immigration, Internet, Joe Lieberman, morally odious morons, mortality, Nashville, net neutrality, offshore drilling, oil, politics, privacy, Republicans, sleep, soccer, superheroes, Supreme Court, the Constitution, the Senate, The Wire, Utopia, voting, war on terror, What could possibly go wrong?, wingnuts
Senate Centrist Halfsies Moderate American Clean Energy & Security Act
To summarize, Graham et al. seem set to explode the fragile consensus formed around ACES in favor of a piece of legislation that will cost more. They’ll lose the coal utilities but are unlikely to pick up Big Oil. The broad range of recipients of pollution allowances under ACES, who were set to receive a steady, predictable income over decades, now face a future patchwork of subsidies dependent on the whims of legislators—just the kind of meddling and favoritism carbon pricing was supposed to transcend. Via Kevin Drum.
Written by gerrycanavan
March 3, 2010 at 9:06 am
Posted in Look at what I found on the Internet
Tagged with cap and trade, carbon, climate change, ecology, Joe Lieberman, John Kerry, Lindsey Graham
Holy Joe
Written by gerrycanavan
March 3, 2010 at 9:03 am
Posted in Look at what I found on the Internet
Tagged with don't ask don't tell, gay rights, Joe Lieberman, politics
Wednesday Night Pre-SotU Links
* The State of the Union address Obama would give in a more honest world. Honestly not looking forward to the speech tonight; the policies have mostly all already been announced, so I imagine the new stuff will just be pointless rhetorical digs at progressives and the Left. Even the good stuff isn’t much; State of the Union promises are often just that. Bonus points at least to Bob McDonnell for finally realizing the opposition response needs an audience.
* This is a link to a typical incendiary blog post. Via @drbluman.
* Barbara Herrnstein Smith vs. Stanley Fish in the New York Times.
* Pessimism watch: Cap and trade is not looking good. Lieberman and Nelson positively gleeful about upcoming opportunities to stab the Democratic caucus in the back. Republicans once again reject their own ideas in their efforts to screw over Obama. But this time Lucy won’t kick the football. iPad questionable at best. And Howard Zinn has died. He’s memorialized at The Nation.
Written by gerrycanavan
January 27, 2010 at 8:41 pm
And Then Al Franken Saved Christmas
Ridiculous, petty, and meaningless as it is, Matt seems to be right that Al Franken’s snub to Joe Lieberman on the Senate floor today is rapidly healing all the blogosphere’s wounds. Dave Weigel has your added dose of minor irony. I’d rather have the Medicare buy-in.
Written by gerrycanavan
December 17, 2009 at 5:39 pm
Posted in Look at what I found on the Internet
Tagged with Al Franken, Joe Lieberman, John McCain, politics, style over substance, the Senate
Thursday News Roundup
* Spider-Man 4 apparently on hold after the shocking discovery that its villains suck.
* The CBO has scored the climate bill:
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office today released an analysis finding that the major climate and energy bill the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee approved in November would reduce the budget deficit by $21 billion over the next decade.
* Now Ben Nelson wants a pony too. Fantastic.
* Somebody tell Ezra Klein to keep his mouth shut about this.
And aside from all that, if you think we can get these pieces in reconciliation, why not pass the bill and then go back and get these pieces in reconciliation? If reconciliation is a good strategy, it’s a good “and” strategy, not a good “or” strategy.
More on the merits of passing an imperfect bill now and improving it later here.
* The Matt Yglesias theory of politics:
Just like I think the evidence is pretty overwhelming that campaign tactics don’t determine who wins presidential elections. But even though neither of those propositions is especially controversial among political scientists, both are hugely unpopular with political junkies. So people are bound to be mad about how casually the White House accepted the view that its job was to (a) discern what Nelson/Lieberman would vote for and then (b) sell everyone to the left of Nelson/Lieberman on voting for it.
Of course he’s right, this is how it works.
* Howard Dean: progressive hero or necessary sacrificial lamb?
* To put it bluntly, we had won the campaign, but were lied to by a small number of Senators. In particular, we were lied to by Joe Lieberman. If you have a post-mortem that could have prevented the lying, I’d love to hear it. For, were it not for the lying, the public option campaign would have been won. But this is why exactly reconciliation should always have been Plan B.
* And over there: Insurgents hack U.S. drones with $26 software.
Written by gerrycanavan
December 17, 2009 at 4:28 pm
Posted in Look at what I found on the Internet
Tagged with Afghanistan, America, Barack Obama, Ben Nelson, climate, drones, ecology, film, health care, Howard Dean, Joe Lieberman, lies and lying liars, politics, reconciliation, Spider-Man, the filibuster, the Senate
Wednesday Roundup
* Skepticism fail: James Randi jumps the shark. Ugh.
* Health care reform continues its endless slide into oblivion. Steve Benen counts the five senators still not on board: Ben Nelson/Olympia Snowe from the “center,” and Feingold, Sanders, and Burris from the left. Meanwhile, Crooks & Liars and Firedoglake still argue the Liebermanized bill is worse than nothing, while Yglesias singles out Harry Reid for praise:
…the fact of the matter is that there’s almost no precedent for the legislative mission he’s been asked to accomplish of turning 59 Democrats, one loosely Democrat-aligned Independent, and two slightly moderate Republicans into 60 votes for a package that’s simultaneously a dramatic expansion of the welfare state and a measure that reduces both short- and long-term deficits.
Fair enough. But it’s Reid’s total rejection of reconciliation as even a theoretical alternative that has left us in this mess in the first place. Reid gets no special praise from me.
* io9’s 20 best SF films of the 2000s. Totally forgot Spider-Man 2 and Eternal Sunshine were from this decade; it’s been a long ten years.
* And meat-eaters finally win a round: “Meat may be the reason humans outlive apes.”
Written by gerrycanavan
December 16, 2009 at 11:19 am
Posted in Look at what I found on the Internet
Tagged with Bernie Sanders, climate change, ecology, evolution, Harry Reid, health care, James Randi, Joe Lieberman, longevity, meat, monkeys, Olympia Snowe, politics, reconciliation, Roland Burris, Russ Feingold, science fiction, skepticism, the filibuster, the Senate, vegetarianism
Just A Few More
* John Hope Franklin’s FBI file. Via Triangulator.
* Scott Lemieux says it’s time to punish Lieberman. Vigorously seconded.
* Lieberman’s bad behavior is still rubbing off on his friends.
* TNR considers how to save Detroit. Via Matt Yglesias.
* Spin‘s best 40 albums of 2009 (with full streaming). iTunes has ruined me for albums; I hardly listen to the ones I have all the way though, much less purchase new ones. Via Lisa.
* “Product”: a web comic. You may have to click the image to maximize it after it loads.
* New research suggest high-fructose corn syrup could damage your digestive system. Via MetaFilter.
Written by gerrycanavan
December 15, 2009 at 8:14 pm
Posted in Look at what I found on the Internet
Tagged with Ben Nelson, Detroit, Duke, FBI, food, health care, high fructose corn syrup, ITunes, Joe Lieberman, John Hope Franklin, music, the Senate, web comics
Everything I Write Is a Special Comment
leave a comment »
* Slant reviews Avatar.
* Is an Iraq-war-era split in the progressive blogosphere re-emerging over health care reform?
* In a Special Comment tonight Olbermann came out against the health care bill. A call to arms I could (potentially) get behind:
is immediately followed by something totally wrongheaded and painfully moronic:
The spectacle of a millionaire instructing his viewers to risk medical bankruptcy out of spite. C’est la Olbermann.
* Why sunspots aren’t causing climate change. Via TNR and Kevin Drum.
* And Bryan Singer will return to the X-Men franchise for First Class. Still wish we could have seen what he intended for the Dark Phoenix Saga. C’est la vie.
Written by gerrycanavan
December 17, 2009 at 1:27 am
Posted in Look at what I found on the Internet
Tagged with Avatar, Barack Obama, blogs, Bryan Singer, climate change, Don't mention the war, ecology, film, health care, insurance, Iraq, Joe Lieberman, Keith Olbermann, Medicare, politics, progressives, Special Comments, sunspots, X-Men