Don’t Be Like Us
Posted on November 30, 2008 at 9:25 pmRep. Zach Wamp issues a warning to Rep. Mumpower and his associates as they prepare to take over the General Assembly:
“One of my recommendations to the party here is to stick to reforms, accountability, transparency, good government and responsibility,” he said. “You’ve got the burden of following through. We were on a mission in trying to bring change and reform. We lost our way. So the lesson of what happened in Washington is very instructive.”
Calling Barack Obama The First Black President May Be Racist
Posted on at 9:18 pmMarie Arana explains:
It’s as if we have one foot in the future and another still mired in the Old South. We are racially sophisticated enough to elect a non-white president, and we are so racially backward that we insist on calling him black. Progress has outpaced vocabulary.
To me, as to increasing numbers of mixed-race people, Barack Obama is not our first black president. He is our first biracial, bicultural president. He is more than the personification of African American achievement. He is a bridge between races, a living symbol of tolerance, a signal that strict racial categories must go.
Defending Ideology
Posted on at 9:12 pmIn the wake of President George W. Bush:
But what’s more striking still is the elevation of managerial competence to the highest possible qualification for political office. Obviously, after eight years of nepotistic croynism, competence does look like a breath of fresh air. And I can understand, as well, the automatic suspicion of “ideology” (a word that has a very precise meaning in much political theory, thus making it a bit difficult for me to use it the way it is used in ordinary political commentary….but I’ll try…) after eight years of delusional neoconservative true believers. But politics cannot, finally, be reduced merely to technical management and administration. Means must be deployed in the service of particular ends, and the choice of those ends can never be specified purely by managerialism. In the midst of a serious crisis, some ends are beyond dispute: get the economy back on track. But what does that actually mean? What does a well-functioning economy look like? Only a political - only what mainstream commentators call an ideological - vision can actually answer that question. Is a healthy economy measured entirely by corporate profits? The people in charge of “righting” the economy must have answers to these questions before they can put their much-ballyhooed seriousness and competence to work - and our collective obsession with technocratic skill obscures the answers to these questions. Indeed, it prevents us from even asking these questions.
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Do You Ever Wonder If Western Culture Is Dying?
Posted on at 9:07 pmDo you ever get the feeling maybe it deserves to?
MORE:
Tennessee Guerilla Women
Matthew Hurtt (II)
Article 19
Newscoma
Rex Hammock
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Unite The Right
Posted on at 8:58 pmAn argument in favor of the continuation of fusionism:
Coexisting is not the same as embracing. Social Conservatives can work with Libertarians without embracing the legalization of all drugs and eradication of all borders. Libertarians can reciprocate without “walking an aisle” or surrendering any presumed intellectual superiority. This strengthens us all at little cost. Intentionally devouring one another, on the other hand, not only thins the ranks physically, it depletes stores of philosophical and principle based strength as well.
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The Religious Right Is Smarter Than The Religious Left
Posted on November 29, 2008 at 4:44 pmThe secular Left, however, is smarter than both the religious and secular Right.
Myth-Busting The Myth Busters
Posted on at 4:40 pmFrom the Huffington Post:
The Campaign Finance Institute (CFI) study disclosing that Barack Obama actually raised most of his campaign money from “larger” not “smaller” donors has gained wide, approving, coverage in recent days, from USA Today to the Los Angeles Times and countless web sites, even making Huffington Post at least twice, including as a top link currently. Nearly everyone has headed their account with a headline referring to the “myth” of Obama riding a wave of small donations to victory. That study’s author himself uses it.
But the “myth” is actually in the spinning of the report, including by its author, Michael Malbin, a former speechwriter for Dick Cheney, when he was Pentagon chief, and a resident fellow at The American Enterprise Institute from 1977 to 1986.
As usual in these cases, it’s not that the numbers are wrong, it’s the analysis and how the interpretation is being played by the media. Because, buried in the report, are all the figures and arguments for showing - in a counter-spin - that the CFI’s “myth” is actually a myth.
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Wilson County Commissioner Abuses Background Check System
Posted on at 4:38 pmFrom Radio Free Mt. Juliet:
“Wilson County Commissioner Chris Sorey used a state Web site to run unauthorized background checks on citizens, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation says.”
“Helm would not identify those whose backgrounds were checked, but Mt. Juliet City Manager Randy Robertson has told his employees that the portal was used to run private information on some city employees and a person of prominence within the city.”
Sorey “was placed on routine, unpaid administrative leave on Nov. 6, said John Black, executive director of the Smyrna/Rutherford County Airport Authority. On Nov. 13, Sorey resigned to take a higher-paying job.”
As a result of the investigation, the TBI has blocked the Smyrna/Rutherford County Airport Authority from all access to the TBI’s “Criminal Justice Portal.”
“The TBI turned over its information to Rutherford County District Attorney William Whitesell, who did not seek a criminal investigation and said no charges are pending.”
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TNGOP Communications Director (Almost) Invites A Lawsuit
Posted on at 3:07 pmI’m told the state employee at the center of this post isn’t happy that her having defrauded taxpayers of nearly $2,000 by working fewer hours than claimed on her time logs, and who is still on the job and recently got a raise, isn’t happy about the post. I almost hope she sues.
Dispatch From An Evolutionary Conservative
Posted on at 2:25 pmA secular conservative bemoans the state of even so-called “enlightened” conservative discourse:
I couldn’t take evolutionary theory as a prior in making arguments in my diaries because many will start rambling about how it is “only a theory” which has been “disproved by modern science.” This is made up stuff from bizarro-world. Unless people want to go back to living in thatched huts they need to be very stingy with the psychological luxury good that is skepticism of the findings of established science. Science does not tell you how you should live in this world, it does not tell us what is important, what is good, what is right, or, importantly, what non-scientific inferences we should make from it. It gives us the basic parameters which frame our position in the universe. Others can expend their marginal time arguing with people about the basic premises of existence in the universe, it’s not my cup of tea….
With Obama Everything Is An Event
Posted on at 2:06 pmFrom the Washington Times:
In Virginia - where Mr. Obama defeated Republican competitor Sen. John McCain by earning nearly 53 percent of the vote - the Electoral College ceremony is being moved from the old House chamber in the Capitol to the new House chamber that can accommodate more people.
The old chamber - where Robert E. Lee accepted command of Virginia’s forces in 1861 - holds roughly 100, she said. The newer chamber has room for double that number.
“We do have much more interest this year than we have noticed in the past,” Miss Parker said. “So we moved it, so we could accommodate twice as many people.”
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What Do You Say To Somebody Who Hates?
Posted on at 1:54 pmpermalink | Comment on this post
What About The Policy?
Posted on at 1:30 pmMatthew Yglesias has heard enough about the backroom negotiations that led to the decision to tap Hillary Clinton as the new Secretary of State, he wants to her more about the policy implications of the move and how differences between Obama and Clinton have been and will be resolved:
None of these disputes involves a gaping, unbridgeable policy void. Indeed, it’s completely common for an administration’s national security team to represent a range of views, and these disputes are well within an acceptable margin of error.
Still, there is a clear pattern to these differences, one that becomes more dramatic when considered alongside the positions Clinton and Obama took back in 2002 on the merits of invading Iraq. Clinton is not only more hawkish than Obama – she’s also more politically risk-averse: disinclined to tackle entrenched interest groups or challenge conventional wisdom. Clinton represents a segment of the Democratic party that spent the years after September 11 fretting intensely over whether Democrats seemed sufficiently “tough” – worried about a replay of the 1970s, when Democratic anti-war sentiment scared off the public.
Obama and his younger supporters took a distinctly post-September 11 perspective, in which insufficient backbone in standing up to Bush’s reckless policies was the party’s primary sin. To many, this was the central appeal of Obama’s candidacy. This important distinction between the Clinton and Obama approaches was reflected in their campaigns: Obama staffers spoke explicitly to me and others about their desire to take advantage of the shift in public sentiment in the wake of the Iraq disaster to move beyond the politics of toughness and enact dramatic shifts in America’s relationship to the world.
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Indivisible
Posted on at 1:20 pmMike Byrd alerts us to death of the man responsible for getting “under God” added to the Pledge of Allegiance in the 50s and reminds us of the origins of the Pledge.
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Seen All He Needs
Posted on at 1:11 pmDavid Oatney doesn’t need to see any not-so-incriminating emails from Rep. Steve McDaniel to make a decision about whether the man should be Speaker Pro Tem:
I do not believe much more incrimination is needed other than that Steve McDaniel voted for the income tax and for Jimmy Naifeh for Speaker of the House. We might like to find even more juicy tidbits that prove McDaniel’s lack of conservatism or party loyalty to a greater degree because, as many are quick to point out, we need these Republican short-shrifters who voted for Naifeh to vote with us for House Speaker. I have no problem thowing these folks some nice meaty bones,but leadership posts should go to conservatives and to loyal Republicans who have worked for this day. Standing with the GOP through thick and thin needs to be rewarded when the political situation is truly at its thickest point for Tennessee Republicans.
The Disappearance Of The Off-Switch
Posted on November 28, 2008 at 6:31 pmA politician, whose drunken confessions to a barkeep were published on the internet, attacks citizen journalism:
I want to take this opportunity and use this non-event to signal a dangerous phenomenon in our society. We live in a time where everybody is free to publish whatever he or she wants on blogs at will without taking any responsibility. This exceeds mud-slinging. Together with you, other Parliament members and the government I find that it’s nearly impossible to defend yourself against this. Everyone of you is a potential victim. I would like to ask you to take a moment and think about this.
Breakin’ The Law
Posted on at 6:22 pmOut of state purchases by Tennesseans are not supposed to be tax-free:
The Revenue Department has programs in place to share information with other states about the sale of aircraft, boats, ATVs and jewelry, according to Joan Cagle, tax audit supervisor for Tennessee. The department also has worked with several furniture and carpet dealers in other states to help track out-of-state sales.
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