For your daily dose of schadenfraude… If you haven’t seen it yet, it’s worth watching this video of Indiana Rep. Mark “Morally and Physically Repellent” Souder, the family values-touting Republican who just announced his resignation after admitting his affair with a staffer. In it, the woman with whom he was cheating on his wife interviews Souder about his passionate support for abstinence education. Ha. Real glad he was doing his best to keep teens from engaging in sex outside of the sacred bonds of marriage. The video, which up until yesterday was featured on Souder’s website but...
Continue reading...United States
New York Times Columnist Line of the Day
If you’re one of the four-or-so frequent readers of this here blog, chances are you also occasionally check out the New York Times op-ed page. You may even know the names: Thomas “Friedman Ain’t Free” Friedman, Gail “The Colander” Collins, Nicholas “The Dark Crystal” Kristof, &c. Well, I’ve decided to devote a daily feature to these folks, by daily pointing out one line that is either awesome, funny, insightful, intelligent, ridiculous, or utterly divorced from reality. I hope you enjoy. Today\’s is from Tawmy \”Friedman\’s Just Another Word For Nothing Left To Lose\” Friedman, who, in his...
Continue reading...Geometry teacher really bad at coming up with original examples
From the “Obvious Things Teachers Shouldn’t Do That Don’t Involve Anything Sexual” Files: A Jefferson County teacher picked the wrong example when he used assassinating President Barack Obama as a way to teach angles to his geometry students. … The teacher was apparently teaching his geometry students about parallel lines and angles, officials said. He used the example of where to stand and aim if shooting Obama. Um. Okay. Superintendent Phil Hammonds said the teacher remains at work, and there are no plans for termination. “We are going to have a long conversation with him about what\’s...
Continue reading...Ta-Nehisi Coates on affirmative action and victimhood
We made mention of it this morning in the Morning Constitutional, but there is a significant amount of grumbling in some circles over how Miss Michigan, Rima Fakih, an Arab-American, won the Miss America pageant last night. We did note Adam Serwer’s excellent comments, but Ta-Nehisi Coates over at the Atlantic goes further and uses this example to unveil the racism behind those who immediately think she must have won because of affirmative action, and affirmative action critics in general: That aside, I think it’s obviously fine to have a debate about the effectiveness and justice of...
Continue reading...Primary Colors
There are several pretty important party primaries (and one special election) tomorrow around the country. Well, not important insofar as they’ll have any real impact, but important because they’ll guide the narrative leading to election day in November. Each party will see what messages worked, where the mood of the country is and is heading, and, probably less importantly, how big of a role the tea partiers can have in the election. I’ve been paying attention to most of the races since at least earlier this year, if not earlier, and have seen a stupid amount of...
Continue reading...Dale Peterson, candidate for Alabama Agriculture Commissioner, hates thugs and criminals, loves guns and horses
As may be becoming pretty obvious, I have a thing for brilliant campaign ads. And Alabama seems to be producing a good number of them. This one, from Dale Peterson, a candidate for the Republican nomination for Agriculture Commissioner in Alabama, is yet another. It features a good dose of aggression (both in editing and in acting), a horse, a sweet rifle, and plenty of hostility to “thugs and criminals” who keep the citizenry in the dark, those who steal lawn signs, illegals bussed in by the thousands, and his opponent who brags about taking money from...
Continue reading...Jobs
Ronald Brownstein at the National Journal: If the economy produces jobs over the next eight months at the same pace as it did over the past four months, the nation will have created more jobs in 2010 alone than it did over the entire eight years of George W. Bush’s presidency. That comparison comes with many footnotes and asterisks. But it shows how the economic debate between the parties could look very different over time — perhaps by November, more likely by 2012. More important, the comparison underscores the urgency of repairing an American job-creation machine that...
Continue reading..."HAHA U ARE IN A LOT OF TROUBLE YOU CAN DELETE BUT THE WHOLE WORLD KNOWS WAT YOU SED BITCH"
Oops? The Republican vying for Rep. Jerry McNerney’s seat in California’s 11th district, Brad Goehring, posted the following to his Facebook account yesterday: If I could issue hunting permits, I would officially declare today opening day for liberals. The season would extend through November 2 and have no limits on how many taken as we desperately need to ‘thin’ the herd. Of course, he claims it was a joke. And, maybe he didn’t hear about the last few times conservatives made “shooting at liberals” jokes. The post has been deleted, so maybe figured it out. But, as...
Continue reading...Ross Douthat Suuuuucks.
It will surprise no one to hear that Ross Douthat makes me mad. He makes me mad because his views are stupid, and because he doesn’t seem to believe in things like “data” or “facts,” and he also makes me real mad at the NYT Op-Ed page for hiring him in the first place. As Amanda Marcotte aptly points out in her takedown of Douthat’s column yesterday, his writing typically concludes with a take-home message “so factually incorrect that the newspaper ought to run the correction alongside it.” Marcotte and Rachael Larimore are currently hashing out the...
Continue reading...First Thoughts on the Kagan Nom
I’m alarmed by the precedent that a Democratic nominee for Supreme Court cannot have a record on abortion. Elena Kagan doesn’t have a record on much in the way of any controversial issues, but neither she nor Justice Sotomayor had any obvious pro-choice skeletons in the closet. which is disturbing because — “skeletons in the closet”?? Abortion is still a legal medical procedure. The fact that Diane Wood voted consistently to uphold this constitutionally protected right should never have disqualified her, and yet it seems pretty clear that that’s what made her unpalatable. Plus, the nomination confirms...
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