LANGUAGE WARNING: Today's story is uncharacteristically blunt, and from this moment forward we will be using lots of inappropriate language in making our points.
It is by now fairly well known that Rahm Emanuel, President Obama's White House Chief of Staff, had a bit of a blow-up with liberals who were ready to start running ads against "blue dog" Democrats who were working very hard to shut down the health care reform effort.
Now we're not gonna get in the middle of that argument today; instead, since we're finally getting a chance to talk, I figured me and Rahm could get a few other things out of the way that have been on everyone's mind for the past year or so.
The Texas A&M Chapter of the Young Conservatives of Texas is a group of the most conservatives students on the most conservative college campus in the nation. However, the YCT contends that Texas A&M is not as conservative as it is portrayed. The mission of the YCT, as articulated by the Chairman, is to "turn a passive, silent, oblivious majority of conservatives into an active, vocal, aware majority" and to "defend and revive conservatism among the American people...before we lose what has made Texas and this country great and blessed." So how exactly are they going to accomplish their mission? By fighting "liberalism wherever it may be."
A new tool being used by conservative activist is CampusReform.org, which was created by The Leadership Institute, a Virginia based training organization for potential conservative political leaders. The Leadership Instituted, which labels itself as a "a non-partisan educational organization," includes such notable "non-partisan" alumni as Republican Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican Congressman Joe Wilson, President of Americans for Tax Reform Grover Norquist, and the "non-partisan" Karl Rove.
As Campus Progress reported, the Leadership Instituted launched a social networking site CampusReform.org so students can report and organize against professors that they view as politically biased. One of the main features of the site is the ability of students to rate professors anonymously, using a scale ranging from liberal to conservative.
There where five faculty members of Texas A&M University that where listed: Antoin Schwab, Ben Harper, Kimberly Brown, Tanya Weathers, and Terence Lamb. Besides being labeled as liberals they all have one thing else in common: all of them are African-American. According to the Office of Diversity, of 2609 faculty members at Texas A&M 93 are African-American (3.5%). The probably of choosing five African American faculty at random is 5x10^-6%, or one in 19,000,000. This gives the perception of racism because it insinuates that African-American professors are "not like the real A&M", and "not like us".
It's not often I can be said to have oversold John Cornyn's anything, but I gave the devil his due and then some when Big Bad J. took the heads of his party to task:
He's not gonna wanna reverse on that, and I think he still imagines he's in good position to raise his national profile. So I think the wingnuts will have this drum to beat for a while before he apologizes for "misspeaking".
Over the last several days the Republican Party has been struggling with something: itself. For liberals and progressives there are few things as entertaining as watching the Grand OLD Party eat itself: between David Brooks calling Bobby Jindal's response to President Obama's State of the Nation speech "the worst response to a Democratic speaker in the history of democracy" and the Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairman apologizing to Rush Limbaugh.
It can only be assumed that after Election Day the GOP, and the conservative movement by extension, began going through the stages of grief is somewhere between denial and anger. What should be interesting is when the GOP moves to the bargaining stage, if this current stage is any indication it is going to continue to be a political disaster. At the current rate it seems as though acceptance much further in the future than a mid-term election.
Some of those who supported Senator Hillary Clinton during the Democratic Primary that are now pledging to support Senator McCain are the wrong side. Those behind groups like "Just Say No Deal" and "Clintons 4 McCain" and not honoring Clinton by supporting a candidate that stands against everything Clinton stands for. Joe Conason of TruthDig.com asks,
"Is this the politics of revenge? Is it the cult of personality? Is it just stubborn idiocy?"
(You would think at some point Republicans would run a fair non-binding poll just for the sheer novelty. Except, of course, they know they can't risk a fair fight. - promoted by boadicea)
The NRCC (National Republican Congressional Committee) thinks its members are just gullible and stupid. Their "Business Advisory Council" scam never ceases to prove it. Yet another case in point: This recent email sent to their email list, and luckily for us, preserved on their website:
Just yesterday I was doing some reading at the BlueNC site, and I found this story by persondem who is planning to make and presumably distribute anti-McCain yard signs.
persondem was asking the community for slogans...which got me to thinking, "why not?"
Before I knew what I was doing I had created roughly 50 of the darn things-and that's how we get to today's story...
Your friendly fake consultant has been digging deep into the world of anonymous sources recently, which is why we were able to recently reveal the truth about Hillary Clinton's Bosnian sniper story.
Today we take that effort further...which is why we are able to bring to light another exclusive peek into the past of a Presidential candidate...only today it's Barack Obama.
We will examine his prior associations and as a result we will be able to draw new conclusions regarding his world view...and as we said about Clinton, you might be shocked...but probably not surprised.
To think about the place is to consider the duality of Tao.
A State with a dramatic duality of geography-the trees and rolling hills of East Texas compare starkly to the Panhandle...or Corpus Christi, for that matter.
The duality extends to politics as well.
Consider today's "Madness of King George", the weird nexus between Conservative politics and State governance as practiced by Rick "Leadership by Coiffure" Perry, and the perennially wacky antics of the Lege and the unique personalities who find there safe harbor.
Balanced against that are the "aw shucks" kinda folks who have truly made Texas great: Jim Hightower, Ann Richards, and Molly Ivins being three examples who between them represent just a tiny scratch on the deeply carved surface of the big picnic table upon which the BBQ of Texas society is served.
Duality factors into today's conversation as well; as we intertwine thoughts of West Berlin, succession, and a mini-review of one of the world's preeminent music festivals: SXSW.
As so many of us discover, late nights are the best time to do any serious writing that has piled up during the day. No meetings to attend, no phone calls to interrupt the flow...and most importantly, nobody else's fires to put out.
And sure enough, there I was, working away, when the phone rang.
I knew who it was going to be...Hillary.
After all, she's the only one who ever calls me at 3 AM.
Mr. Bush has officially informed us that recent success in Al-Anbar Province should convince us to "stay the course" in Iraq, despite the failure of every other aspect of his Iraq/Afghanistan/foreign policy initiatives-and the shifting nature of the definition of success.
Even more ironically, Mr. Bush now plans to become a crusader for fiscal responsibility, despite his failure to take this issue seriously in the past.
All of this has lead to a huge back and forth between those who claim this bit of recent overseas success and the current "strong economy" justify more of the same, as success is finally "just around the corner", and those who see this President's Iraq policy as essentially passing the problem on to the next President.
A pirate's life isn't easy; it takes a tough person. That's okay with you, though, since you a tough person. Like the rock flint, you're hard and sharp. But, also like flint, you're easily chipped, and sparky. Arr!
In the age of scanners, photoshop and digital recreation plotters, this is unacceptable (Note the seal of the Republic of Niger, crudely drawn by a 5th grader):
As per request, here are my thoughts about this document, before our feature presentation: Why was such an amateurish seal produced? Because they have a track record of hiring the most incompetent people possible.
They aren't that stupid are they? Survey says: YES!
Has anyone asked this question before? Not really, I think everyone is to embarrassed.
Was detection of the fakery intended?
How could it not be? Look at the seal! Do you see?!??
In a story released today, Southern Methodist University President R. Gerald Turner announced a compromise between proponents of the Bush Presidential Library project, and faculty members who had objected to the location of the facility on the SMU campus.
In an effort to allay concerns that important scholarship would not be conducted at the Library, SMU's President has arranged for the co-location within the Library of the Molly Ivins Institute for the Study of Political Numb-Nuttery.
Many of the members of the hiring committee had reservations when we hired you 6 years ago. But we tried to give you the benefit of the doubt. Recently, we've had a number of complaints about your performance from nearly everyone you interface with. Please consider this your final warning.
