We’re All In The Same Gang
Posted on December 31, 2008 at 4:08 pmSean Braisted on the divide between the elite and the people:
Human nature is not as complex as we’d like to believe. And the difference between an poverty stricken Southerner and a wealthy urbanite with a master’s degree isn’t all that great in the end. Hopefully the media folks will stop speaking condescendingly of “workin’ class whites” and idealizing small town values as if anyone who lives and works outside of eyesight of a skyscraper is somehow more simplistic in how they chose the candidates they’ll support.
Reviews Are In On The Place We Call Home
Posted on at 3:56 pmNashvillest with a list of lists.
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Selling History
Posted on at 3:48 pmInstead of selling out to lobbyists.
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The Six Year Mattress Plan
Posted on at 3:45 pm“All told, about $7 trillion of shareholders’ wealth — the gains of the last six years — will be wiped out in a year marked by violent market swings.”
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Downtown Gaza
Posted on at 3:43 pmProtesters descended on Nashville today to make folks aware of the goings on in the Middle East:
A group of approximately 200 Palestine supporters gathered on James Robertson Parkway in response to the increased bombings by the Israeli army in Gaza. The demonstrators chanted, “Long live Palestine! Long live Gaza!” They also held up signs accusing the Israeli government of killing innocent civilians, including children, while encouraging passing motorists to “Honk for peace.”
Labeeb Alkoka said the rally, organized by the Islamic Center of Nashville, was to alert Nashvillians to the effect of the military action by the Israeli government.
Comparing Margaret Thatcher To Sarah Palin
Posted on at 2:36 pmNot as big a stretch as one might think:
Her main political legacy from that job was the vitriolic slogan, “Margaret Thatcher, Milk-Snatcher,” thrown at her by the left because of a budgetary decision she had opposed to charge some children for school meals and milk. It was the single most famous thing about her when she defeated Heath for the Tory leadership in 1975.
At this point she became almost as “controversial” as Sarah Palin. Heath, for example, made it plain privately that he would not serve under her. And Sir Ian Gilmour, an intellectual leader of the Tory “wets,” privately dismissed her as a “Daily Telegraph woman.” There is no precise equivalent in American English, but “narrow, repressed suburbanite” catches the sense.
Mrs. Thatcher attracted such abuse for two reasons. First, she was seen by the chattering classes as representing a blend of provincial conservative values and market economics — Middle England as it has come to be called — against their own metropolitan liberalism. They thought this blend was an economic dead-end in a modern complex society and a political retreat into futile nostalgia. Of course, they failed to notice that their modern complex society was splintering under their statist burdens even as they denounced her extremism.
Second, Margaret Thatcher was not yet Margaret Thatcher. She had not won the 1979 election, recovered the Falklands, reformed trade union law, defeated the miners, and helped destroy Soviet communism peacefully.
Things like that change your mind about a girl.
Overseeing The TVA Accident
Posted on at 2:23 pmThe U.S. Senate will give the spill a look-see:
The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, on which Tennessee Sen. Lamar Alexander serves, will hold a hearing Jan. 8 about the coal-ash spill at the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Kingston Fossil Plant.
The committee has oversight of TVA.
Immigrant Population Continues Decline
Posted on at 1:37 pmMore evidence from the Davidson County Sheriff:
The sheriff’s department doesn’t know exactly what is causing the decrease, but local immigration experts, like attorney Sean Lewis, have their theories.
“I feel, because I can only guess, that it’s the economy,” said Lewis.
There are fewer immigrants in Nashville because they’re leaving since they can’t find work, said Lewis.
“I had a case today where they came in, and they normally do 15 houses a year at a construction company, and he came in today and said, ‘In the past year, we did three houses,’” said Lewis.
Since April 2007, when the Davidson County Sheriff’s Department started a partnership with federal authorities, they’ve begun removal proceedings against 4,500 people.
“These people are being removed from our community, and even if they do come back to the United States, we hope that they won’t come back here,” said Weikel.
So Is Bill Frist Running For Governor Or Not?
Posted on at 12:52 pmBill Haslam’s actions indicate he thinks not:
There will be a one-hour breakfast meeting at Pilot Corp. headquarters next Wednesday (Jan. 7) where about 100 guests will hear a status report on Knoxville Mayor Bill Haslam’s plans to run for governor in 2010.
Jimmy Haslam, CEO of Pilot and the mayor’s brother, issued the invitations to the group of heavy hitters with a promise the 7:30 a.m meeting will last no longer than an hour. Jimmy Haslam, who was a major player in raising money for the election of his friend Bob Corker to the U.S. Senate, is expected to play a major role in his brother’s campaign as well.
Do You Really Want To Hurt Them?
Posted on at 12:24 pmAunt B. on the relationship between gays and evangelicals:
Just think about this. Someone is causing you pain and suffering. You do all you can to avoid them. You don’t go to their church. You move out of their town. You don’t make too big a deal about yourself so as to try to escape their notice. And yet… and yet they still do what they can to hurt you. And their answer is “Just change and I’ll stop hurting you.”
Let me say that again–”Just change and I’ll stop hurting you.”
That’s the “Christian” message towards gay people. Simple as that; that’s what it boils down to. Oh, sure, they have a million excuses and justifications for why it’s okay, nay practically their duty to hurt gay people who won’t change. But, in the end, it boils down to “You’re making me hurt you.”
And folks, it doesn’t take a genius to see that for the abusive nonsense it is.
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Nat Hentoff Sacked
Posted on at 12:21 pmThe only atheist, left-wing, pro-life civil libertarian writer at the Village Voice has been laid off:
Mr. Hentoff said he learned the news in a phone call with Mr. Ortega on Tuesday morning. “I’m 83 and a half. You’d think they’d have let me go silently,” he said. “Fortunately, I’ve never been more productive.”
Mr. Hentoff plans to continue to write a weekly column for the United Media syndicate and contribute pieces to The Wall Street Journal. His book “At the Jazz Band Ball: 60 Years on the Jazz Scene,” is expected next year.
“With all due immodesty, I think it doesn’t help to lose me because people have told me they read The Voice not only for me, but certainly for me,” he said.
Media Banned From Bredesen Tour Of The TVA Spill Site
Posted on at 11:41 amFrom Matt Lakin:
Plans call for the governor to arrive shortly after noon to talk with officials and visit the site of the spill. Reporters and photographers can follow the governor down an access road with no view of the site, but only to a perimeter marked by orange barrels. They won’t be allowed to accompany Bredesen through the site, TVA officials said.
“It is a safety concern,” said Barbara Martocci. “We’re not going to stop the construction process, and that’s what it boils down to. There were just too many people to corral.”
Magic Negrogate Across The Pond
Posted on at 11:38 amMichael Tomasky on the Chip Saltsman fiasco:
The natural reflex is to assume that these folks know that a parody song called “Barack the Magic Negro” is racist on its face, but they just don’t care. But that is not the problem here. The problem is that they genuinely don’t see it as racist on its face and don’t understand why the rest of us do.
Because it’s just a “joke.” And it’s an okay joke for them because, by and large, many of them don’t have much contact with people unlike themselves. At the GOP convention, I walked a full circle around the concourse counting the black faces. I think I got to 18 — which is more than, you know, two, but remember that was out of 20,000 or so people in the hall.
Obama Confronted With The Immigration Issue
Posted on at 11:17 amThe demographic makeup of PEBO’s mandate may force him into some tough situations:
“I think immigration is shaping up to be an issue that he is going to face a consensus of pressure,” said Ali Noorani, executive director of the National Immigration Forum. “There is no reason a number of administrative actions can’t be put into place in the first 100 days.”
Immigration was not one of the top policy objectives laid out by Obama during the campaign. But labor, business and immigrant-rights groups sense an opportunity to push their agenda after Hispanic voters broke in large numbers for Obama and helped him win four battleground states: Colorado, New Mexico, Florida and Nevada. Noorani wants to see legislative movement on an overhaul of the country’s immigration laws by Thanksgiving of 2009.
The Obama transition team did not respond to requests for comment.
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Welcome To The World Of You Don’t Have A Choice
Posted on at 11:15 amBob Krumm argues that the Senate can’t keep Illinois’s appointed Senate just because they don’t like the guy who appointed him:
Roland Burris is constitutionally qualified to be a U.S. Senator, and absent evidence of a quid pro quo appointment, his appointment is lawful. Sadly, it appears that this appointment may be the only lawful thing Governor Blagojevich has done during his term of office.
Ron Paul But Not
Posted on at 11:12 amKatrina Vanden Heuvel says the future of the GOP in libertarianism:
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Socialists
Posted on at 9:53 amThey are everywhere.
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Who Wants To Play Some Cards?
Posted on at 9:46 amSean Braisted is not impressed by those charging that a refusal to seat a Senator appointed by a corrupt Governor would be racially motivated:
I get that the man wants to be a Senator, but Obama and the Senate Democrats were fairly clear long before Blagojevich whittled down his list of candidates who’d accept his nomination, that anybody Blago picked would be unacceptable. The key to effectively playing the race card is subtlety, and this is about as subtle as a freight train.
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