December 2009
19 posts
Someone Tell Lindsay Graham That White People Get... →
“When he did it yesterday I thought maybe he was just free-associating or something, but Media Matters observes that yesterday in formal remarks on the Senate floor Lindsay Graham again argued that South Carolina deserves a fair share of Medicaid money specifically by citing the fact that black people live there…”
The NYT's view of "journalistic objectivity" →
“So just consider the record here. The New York Times will frequently label what other governments do as “torture” but steadfastly refuses to use that term for what the American government did. It promiscuously accuses foreign countries of “human rights atrocities” but self-righteously objects when that term is applied to our own government even after it abducts,...
Tea Partier Calls C-SPAN, Worried His Prayers For... →
WatchSo that’s how you do it.
That Old College Lie, by Kevin Carey →
a very fascinating article:
“Some might argue that colleges are just enforcing academic standards by refusing to graduate unprepared students. But the evidence suggests otherwise. A 2006 study from the American Institutes for Research found that only 31 percent of adults with bachelor’s degrees are proficient in “prose literacy”–being able to compare and contrast two newspaper...
David Bromwich - Obama's Delusion →
“Long before he became president, there were signs in Barack Obama of a tendency to promise things easily and compromise often. He broke a campaign vow to filibuster a bill that immunised telecom outfits against prosecution for the assistance they gave to domestic spying. He kept his promise from October 2007 until July 2008, then voted for the compromise that spared the telecoms. As...
WatchGritTV on fixing capitalism.
“It is only in folk tales, children’s stories, and the journals of...”
– Noam Chomsky
In the hands of Bernie Sanders
Our only savior now:
Hopefully Bernie Sanders will make it clear that he won’t vote for the bill without specific improvements, forcing Lieberman and the Obama Administration (I can’t believe I’m referring to them together) to make more concessions before passage.
Even if he can’t claw back the Public Option or the Medicare Buy-In, Sanders might still be able to fight...
Supreme Court Refuses to Hear Suit Seeking... →
From the Center for Constitutional Rights:
“December 14, 2009—Today, the United States Supreme Court refused to review a lower court’s dismissal of a case brought by four British former detainees against Donald Rumsfeld and senior military officers for ordering torture and religious abuse at Guantánamo. The British detainees spent more than two years in Guantanamo and were repatriated to...
WatchAuthor & Journalist Naomi Klein: Fate of Planet Rests on Mass Movement for Climate Justice
Hundreds of activists from across the globe are gathering every day in downtown Copenhagen for the people’s climate summit, the Klimaforum. On Thursday night, Shock Doctrine author and journalist Naomi Klein addressed a packed hall at a panel on ecological debt and climate justice.
Welfare and the Poorest of the Poor →
“Welfare as we used to know it was the program called Aid to Families with Dependent Children, in effect from 1935 to 1996. It was hardly generous (as well as being otherwise flawed), but it nonetheless succumbed in 1996 to three decades of conservative attack. The allegation was that it had created undue numbers of long-term recipients; it had fostered welfare dependency. The program was...
Lawyers fight to halt Ohio execution condemned as... →
Barbarism begins at home.
Abandoning California's commitment to education →
“Of all the damage that has been done in recent years by Sacramento’s habitual flight from fiscal responsibility — particularly during the disastrous Schwarzenegger years — none has been more injurious or perverse than the budgetary mistreatment of the state’s universities and community colleges. Starved for adequate funds, what was once California’s greatest...
“Nothing in my view is more reprehensible than those habits of mind in the...”
– Edward Said, Representations of the Intellectual, p. 11.
Natalie Cole, “Good Morning Heartache”
