Uncategorized

Alas, a Blog talks about Cynthia McKinney and double standards
at The American Prospect:

So why is the Prospect bending over backwards to defend Gore, while eagerly jumping on the McKinney smear bandwagon? Because Gore is a centrist Democrat, while McKinney is an actual leftist. Just as Republicans hate and smear Democrats, Democrats hate and smear leftists. TAPPED doesn’t think doing this sort of press bias is wrong; they just think it’s wrong to use it against politicians from their own political camp.

[…]

There’s also a racist and sexist undercurrent to this story.

Just to make it clear: I’m not accusing TAPPED or Wyeth Wire of being racists or sexists. (I think TAPPED’s calling McKinney an “idiot” is contemptible, but that doesn’t make TAPPED a bigot, just an asshole).

But I do think that the press as a whole is particularly open to the “Cynthia is a nutcase” analysis because she’s an uppity black woman. And I think blacks and women are, due to the racist and sexist undercurrents of our culture, particularly vulnerable to being smeared in this way.

And although I don’t think TAPPED dislikes black women (for all I know, TAPPED is a black woman – although I’d be surprised, considering how few blacks or women TAPPED’s sidebar links to), I’d have a hell of a lot more respect for TAPPED if it fought the racist and sexist presumption used against McKinney, rather than going along with it.

Bertram Online is getting more and more
angry with Danish government about their immigration policies:

As explained earlier, the government has paid for its majority with a series of concessions to the xenophobic Danish People?s Party. Fulfilling their election campaign promises of ?being tough? on immigration (and, conveniently, riding on the wave of anti-Muslim sentiments triggered by 911) they started off by the implementing rather draconian limits on the already very tight rules for family reunification. Of course, in order not to get into too much international disregard they could not put into the law itself what they would gladly say in public, namely that this was aimed at limiting the immigration from places such as Somalia, Turkey and Pakistan.

Predictably, it has now been seen in practice what many predicted back then: that this would also hit situations where a Danish citizen?a white one, one should add?wants to marry a furriner from outside the EU. Damn. Complaints are rolling in. Exchange students met nice, clean All- American boys or girls?and cannot live with them here. And so forth.

What to do? Our supposedly intelligent Minister of Integration?a man that has written many a book about lofty issues, but also a book of light verse?has invented the so-called love visa. A special kind of visa that the powers-that-be can issue on their own discretion to accommodate situations where a spouse is from a desirable location.

How elegant. He thinks that he can avoid a furor about an openly ?racist? law, but instead introduces a totally arbitrary, uncontrollable system that is highly unusual, to the least, for a purported democracy such as ours. There is certain stench about it all?

Maxspeak makes the case for Kucinich as Democratic president’s candidate:

The question is, in the meantime, what broad messages ought the public to hear? I would say, full-throated progressive ones, unhampered by narrow, tactical electoral calculation. People need to hear a different side of the story. Kucinich is telling the story. The other candidates are running to not lose. Kucinich is unconstrained by fear of losing, for obvious reasons.

I appreciate the fear of a second Bush term. I for one have never said there is no difference between Bush and the Democrats. But consider the logic of a desperation-driven, anti-Bush posture. His name is Joe Lieberman. What is the basis for his appeal? The pragmatic argument is to adhere to Bush on questions of national security. But where does that leave you.

Bush has already coopted the education issue. He is in the process of getting a new Medicare benefit, the inadequacy of which will not be evident for some years, and he is putting more money into Medicaid. Race and the environment are not going to tip the race. What’s left? Lieberman wants more Clinton-Gingrich style welfare reform. No Democratic politician has a strong critique of welfare reform. It’s like Iraq; the Democrat will “do it better.”

The bottom line is that small, well-wrought distinctions will not swing voters away from Bush. To beat the champ, you have to knock him out. You don’t win on points.

Pandagon gets mad at Clarence Thomas:

Who wants to point out that Thomas should have reasonably recused himself from these cases because he is quite the greatest beneficiary of unconstitutional racial preference in American history? You’re on the Supreme Court because you’re black, Clarence. It didn’t matter if you were qualified, it didn’t matter what you were going to do. George H.W. Bush nominated you because you had dark skin.

Fuckin’ charity case porn addict.

Lean Left on Bush’s redefinition of liberty:

There has been a lot of criticism, from both the left and the right, of Bush’s posture on civil liberties. To defenders of such liberties, George Bush’s actions*, each day seems to bring new outrages, new reasons to be concerned. But there seems to be little comment on the fact that Bush’s arguments, if they prevail, would radically alter the relationship between citizen and government in the most fundamental manner. Our society works under the assumption that the government derives its power from the consent of the government. The society Bush appears to be creating does not share that basic underpinning. In fact, Bush reverses that equation: people are free only to the extent that the government consents to their freedom.