10 Conversations On Racism I’m Sick Of Having With White People (h/t Howie on Facebook)
– It seems like Ryan Blethen had already mostly stopped writing anyway.
– Two of the most insightful, best writers among lefty blogs are having fundraisers.
– I’m surprised more Neocons aren’t claiming Kim Jong Il’s death as a glorious victory against the Axis of Evil.
“It seems like Ryan Blethen had already mostly stopped writing anyway.”
When did he start? (Taking into account that scribbling and writing aren’t the same thing.)
So, figuring out a new business model that works is now dumped in 39-year-old Ryan Blethen’s lap? Because his old man, after wracking his brains for a dozen years, couldn’t think of anything except busting the unions? Doesn’t look good for the future of Republican print propaganda in Seattle.
Shit, man, take a clue from Lehman Brothers and Greece, and default on the fucking promissory notes on the $150 million Lake City printing plant! That thing is an albatross that will soon be worth only scrap-metal prices, so why pay for it? Your bankser, already trillions in the hole, won’t miss another $150M. That’s chump change in Bankster World. What are bankruptcy courts for, anyway, if not to get out of corporate obligations? Airlines do it, auto companies do it, everybody else does it, and flailing newspapers have as much right to go bankrupt as they do! The Post-Intelligencer led the way into all-digital journalism a couple of years ago, and look where they are now! Get with the Times, man, you have no problems that can’t be solve by repudiating your debts. Maybe Frank was right to put his son in charge of this; the older generation is just too hidebound in their thinking, ya gotta be young to clearly see things as they are now — the new coda in the business world is that nobody pays their bills, they just pretend to still be in business, and everyone is happy (except the employees, and they don’t matter).
Re: the first citation above…
I have to agree with the author that merely equating racism with classism doesn’t cut it in the United States. Class warfare goes on all over the world, but we seem to have nurtured a particularly deep-seated and grotesque brand of race hatred here–and current social and political trends are conspiring to reverse some of the meager gains that have been made against it over the last century.
This is not to see that exploitation of racism isn’t a major weapon in a more generalized class struggle–the Wall Street robbers, the Kochs and their ilk are mainly fixated on one color: The green of the stuff in your wallet and how to move it into theirs.
Nah, it happened on Obama’s watch, so if anything it makes N. Korea ever more dangerous.
Teaparty dude Jules Manson gives our nation’s president some wingnut love,
“Assassinate the fucken nigger and his monkey children”
re 7: That is truly a horrible thing for someone to say. Aren’t there laws against that?
Hey, remember when the Republican controlled House passed a one permanent payroll tax cut extension and then got stiff armed when 90% of the Senate refused that and passed with a 90% majority only a 2 month long extension of the payroll tax cut? Me neither!
Funny, I don’t remember the Republicans demanding additional concessions before they would vote on the original Bush tax cut, or even it’s renewal last year. So why do they tie a payroll tax extension to a pipeline deal?
Sorry Darryl, but I just don’t think this one needs any commentary on my part.
I’m sure the secret service has already visited Jules Manson’s house.
From the article:
No one answered a telephone number listed for Manson’s residence in a Carson trailer park Monday.
So he’d already been rightly hauled away perhaps.
I guess by now most have seen the images coming from Pyongyang showing morners with anguished faces and tears, punding the stone walkways in mourning of the passing of their “Dear Leader”.
Remember that in order to live in Pyongyang, you have to be (a) the families of the priviledged elite, and (b) carefully screened for loyalty to the regime. They have some 52 levels of security/loyalty classifications, and you have to be within the top two or so to live in the capital – even if your job there is basically as service job.
People from the rural areas, which make up about half of the security/loyalty classifications, are severely restricted in their movements, and exist on starvation rations at best. Their food ration was just reduced from three potatoes a day to two potatoes – and we aren’t talking Idaho bakers here, more like the little red potatoes. And a ration coupon isn’t a guarantee of food, it just gives you the right to buy it if you can find it.
I expect that the mortuary workers had a really hard time getting the expression of horror off of Kim Jong Kl’s face as he saw the gates of hell opening for him as he drew his last breadth. I’m sure he’s not going to look peaceful as he lies in state.
Washington’s environment, esp its water resources, lost a friend 11/28 with the passing of Joan Thomas. I attended her memorial at St Edward State Park on Saturday. I knew who she was, even worked with her on a project for a couple years, but I didn’t know one tenth of what she accomplished. The Obit is nice, but doesn’t tell nearly enough.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.c.....it06m.html
@14: Thanks for the info on Joan. I served 3 terms with her on the WEC board. Amazing woman.
Never met Joan, but I sure saw her name back when I was active in environmental stuff.
The House Republican leadership pulled the vote on the tax cut tonight out of fear that the compromise reached with 90% of the filibuster bound Senate would pass.
Yea Tea Party!
MSNBC reports the Seattle City Council has voted to ban plastic grocery bags and charge a nickle fee for paper bags.
It appears that long time Seattle political cartoonist David Horsey is decamping to Los Angeles. That’s a pity for our area, always like the guy’s work
#18. Good god. that’s what passes for leadership of the city council?
I would love to primary each and every last one of them out of political existence.
Don’t Settle: Rick Perry for President.
“If this website has a purpose – if any conservative website or publication has a purpose – it must begin with electing conservatives to significant public offices. We have the chance to nominate a conservative for president and win the White House in 2012. We can fumble that chance away by settling for a nominee we can’t trust to pursue conservative policies in office, or we can make a stand for the best, most conservative potential president in the field. That’s Rick Perry, and we enthusiastically endorse him to be the 45th President of the United States.”
http://www.freerepublic.com/fo.....2404/posts
They really hate romney.
I wonder how many of the freepers read the 10 Conversations On Racism I’m Sick Of Having With White People link?
@21:
You can pretty much insert any issue here. It’s faith based bigotry, economics, whatever. It’s pointless to ever argue with a freeper. I think it was Jefferson that said at some point, all you have is ridicule.
@21
Texas Budget 1998 $51B 2009 $110B
Oregon Budget 1998 $13.4B 2009 $24.3B
Washington Budget 1998 $22.8B 2009 $43.4B
Unlike those Democrats Rick Perry’s going to go to Washington DC and cut spending!
@21 They hate winning elections, too.
Hey everyone! It’s time for the nightly vocabulary quiz! My score (“RR”) is already up.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/quiz/index.htm
@25
Drat, 3960. I’ll catch you one of these days, RR!
Following the aviation industry sometimes gives you an insight into the influence of different interest groups. Of course, the guys with the really big bucks (financial industry folks and CEOs of big corporations, etc.) usually have an outside control.
Anyway, one of the trends in the industry over the past several years is that the government opened access to it’s flight-tracking system, allowing web sites to track any aircraft by flight number or tail number. Boeing even put links on it’s web site so people could track the status of the 787 flight test program.
But some people don’t want to be that visible. Like the financial industry and the captains of industry, referenced above. They don’t want bloggers and reporters everywhere to be able to report on how their bailout money is being spent on private jet flights carrying their staffs and their families to resort destinations, European vacations, etc. And big-budget NCAA schools or sports teams don’t want their aircraft tracked so pesky reporters can’t follow their recruiting visits or potential coaching changes.
Hence, the push in Congress to get private aircraft excepted from the program, ostensibly for “security” reasons. Which I find rather ironic since the government mandated TSA checks for private aircraft passengers is little more than a joke – like when the postal clerk asks you if your package contains anything hazardous, liquid, or perishable.
The FAA instituted an exception if the company private aircraft owners could demonstrate a legitimate security concern. But none could do so, so the push resumed for full privacy for private aircraft flights.
As of now, the FAA is honoring any requests under it’s Block Aircraft Registration Request program (BARR), but the backlog of applications is such that many won’t be entered into the system for several months.
Wingnuts, Billo Felafel sez there’s a “War on Christmas” going on. There’s only one place for a red-blooded Murkan right now..
http://mediamatters.org/blog/201112190010
LMAO!!!
@28 Why does the NRA hate the little Baby Jesus?
Gingrich’s Gaffe
Now it’s Newt’s turn to shoot himself in the foot. He’s reminded millions of economically stressed Americans that he gets paid more for a speech than they make in a year:
“‘Freddie Mac hired Gingrich Group, which is a firm which had offices in three cities,’ Gingrich said yesterday, per NBC’s Morgan Parmet. ‘Of the total contract, it was a six-year-period contract. Of the total amount they keep talking about, I probably got about $35,000 a year. Now that’s less than I was making per speech so that’s what my particular interest in it was that amount.'”
http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com.....s-cornered
Roger Rabbit Commentary: Next up: We’ll find out Newt’s 35K a year doesn’t include what other Gingrich family members got from Gingrich Group’s public-agency tit-sucking.
Oh, and be sure to read the first part of that link describing how the House GOPers fucked themselves into raising taxes on the middle class three days before the Iowa caucuses by manipulating the payroll tax extension bill to get an environmentally unsound pipeline that threatens the Oglalla Aquifer on which Nebraska and Iowa farmers depend for water.
More Bad News For Republicans
“Unemployment rates fell in 43 states in November, the most number of states to report such declines in eight years. …
“The economy has generated 100,000 or more jobs five months in a row — the first time that’s happened since 2006 ….”
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45.....d_economy/
Roger Rabbit Commentary: This is an “Oh shit!” moment for Republicans who were banking on high unemployment knocking Obama out of the W.H. and getting more Tea Party crazies into Congress in next year’s elections. Oh, and guess which state is still bleeding jobs? Scott Walker’s Wisconsin.
“The largest month-over-month decline occurred in Wisconsin, a drop of 14,600 payroll jobs.”
So much for his promise to create jobs by firing teachers to pay for eliminating taxes on wealthy manufacturers.
@26 Don’t give up! Practice makes perfect. Of course, having a massive vocabulary, a ferocious mouse paw, and the IQ of a feral rabbit help, too.
The President’s approval rating is up, too – to 49%. Notice how it always increases when he mans up and faces down the Republicans in Congress? And Congress’s approval rating is down generally, but more more so for Republicans than for Democrats.
I know we are all concentrating on the Presidential campaign(at least the media is), but it’s about time we went on the offensive against these Republicans in the House who want to screw up our economy for partison advantage. Make ’em sweat bullets when they realize that their Democratic opponant is getting a minimum of $10 or so from every Democrat in the country. It’s an investment which should pay for itself in the long run.
If I were a rich man (music from “Fiddler on the Roof” plays in the background)…
I’d fund a series of televions spots to play across the country, with a new one every few days. Each one would give a reason for NOT voting for a Republican.
Example:
“Reason # 212 not to vote for Republicans:
Newt Gingrich has said that he is against ‘Big Government”. Yet when he was in Congress his Congressional District was one of the biggest recipients of federal funds. His latest campaign promises would add over a trillion dollars to federal spending, but he offers no way to pay for them.”
Remember back when Republicans used to say that you had to serve in the military in order to be qualified to be Commander in Chief?
That was awfully convenient for them, when the choice was between George H.W. Bush or Robert Dole vs Bill Clinton. But it didn’t work out so well when it was George W. Bush vs. Al Gore or Kerry, so they tried to destroy their military reputations by claiming they “didn’t really serve”.
But whenever I see a candidate who came of age in the 1960’s, I want to know how he handled the problem of the draft and the Vietnam War. We know that there were lot’s of pro-war Republicans who avoided actually serving like the plague, which accords to them the appropriate title of “ChickenHawk”. Rove, Mitchel, Limbaugh, and many, many others come to mind.
So lets look at Romney’s record. He graduated from college in the middle 1960’s, which meant his student deferrment was up and he was subject to the draft. But he took the “missionary” exemption to do field work for the LDS in France in 1967-69. That was a time of massive student unrest in France, and a lot of it was directed at the U.S. for it’s conduct in the Vietnam War.
Romney’s Wikipedia entry pretty much reads like his campaign brochure, describing how he was set up in near-poverty conditions and how he fiercly defended the U.S. position against French leftist attacks, and how he turned around the LDS mission there.
Which pretty much explains why, when running for President in 2008, he fiercly defend George W. Bush’s war in Iraq, but was surprised when someone questioned why his own sons weren’t serving. His rather weak comment was that they were “serving in their own way” by helping in their father’s campaign. In Romney’s mind, other people fight, he and his family are too important to risk in actual combat.
But people are beginning to deconstruct Romney’s story in France. Those who saw the LDS mission there described it as more of an “ambassader’s residence” or “mini-palace” than the hovel he described. And his leadeship in France is coming under question, as well.
The Republicans have always been very good at constructing an impressive life-story and sticking to it. In the past the media has been unable or unwilling to question it too closely. If they had done so with George W. Bush, then his election in 2000 might never have occured – his “story” of being a successful businessmen would have evaporated in the light of two failed oil ventures which were rescued only by his father’s political cronys, and his position as baseball team manager succeded only because those same croneys set him up (without requiring significant financial contribution) as the “face” of the team, and the local taxpayers shouldered the burden of making the team financially succesful so it could be sold at a substantial profit.
Let’s examine Romney even more closely. Everyone should know him very, very well before he becomes the Republican nominee.
Way to go Spokane!
Spokane’s the latest city to pass a complete street ordinance. Complete streets makes your city safer and makes it easier for people do get around on foot and bicycle. Contrary to what the detractors claim complete streets save you money in the long run (detractors typically use few facts and only look at the upfront costs). Having complete streets and safe routes to school ordinances also allow cities to qualify for more state and federal funding than they otherwise would.
@36 “But whenever I see a candidate who came of age in the 1960’s, I want to know how he handled the problem of the draft and the Vietnam War.”
Here’s how I handled it. At a time when many of the kids from privileged families were holing up in graduate schools or running off to Canada because they considered themselves too good to get their asses shot at in Vietnam, I enlisted. Of course, a 30-inch-tall rabbit couldn’t pass a military physical, so I had to beg the Army to take me. This was in 1968, when the Army was so hard up for manpower they’d take anything walking erect on two hind legs (which I can do for about 5 steps), so they let me serve. I didn’t think I was too good to fight with our guys in Vietnam; I wanted to believe I was good enough to fight alongside them.
The government was drafting fathers then; so, because I went to Vietnam, somewhere a dad got to stay home and raise his case. And because I’m a liberal who believes war is evil (after all, I was in a war, so I know what it’s like), and thinks our government should only fight necessary wars, our Republican friends who didn’t serve go around saying I’m “unpatriotic.” Needless to say, that doesn’t sit very well with me; and, at the same time, I find that assertion absurdly laughable — especially considering who it comes from. I wonder if one of them was the dad who got to stay home with his kids because of me?
correction @38: “somewhere a dad got to stay home and raise his kids.”
Show me a Republican and I’ll show you an ingrate.
I don’t say “fucking Republicans” anymore, because it has dawned on me that Republicans don’t reproduce by normal means; they come from spontaneous combustion.
Newt Gingrich is another of the Chicken Hawks.
Newt was born in 1942, almost exactly nine months after his parents married. That marriage dissolved quickly. His mother soon re-married, and his step-father was career military. Newt lived in quite a few places as his father changed stations during his service career.
Newt graduated high school in 1961. He got is B.A. in 1965, his M.A. in 1968, and his PhD in 1971. He used student deferments to avoid the draft until he could no longer did so, then he used his status as a father to avoid the draft after that.
Newt claims that it was a visit to Verdun when he was a teenager that he “learned of the sacrifices there and the importance of political leadership”. In other words, he decided that he was too important as a future political leader to risk being shot at in an actual war.
Notice a trend here, between Romney and Newt? Both seem to think that they are too important to the nation to be “mere grunts”. It kind of reminds one of how Newt blamed his love of his country for his marital infidelity.
These guys are some serious head-cases, someone needs to take a pin to their heads and let some of the air out so they can think normally.
Personally, I was never subject to the Vietnam draft. I graduated high school in 1975. I got a draft card, but the draft ended a week or so after my 18th birthday. I went to college, and then to graduate school. While in graduate school I volunteered for the reserves, but failed the physical due to my bad eyesight – which wouldn’t have kept me out of the military five years earlier, but they were being selective then. Now they just pay for surgery to correct your eyesight and let you in.
Ironically, my eyesight never prevented me from winning marksmanship competitions from the age of eight until I was eighteen.
In 1990, Newt Gingrich won an open seat to the House of Representatives by only 978 votes. He had lost his two previous attempts to win a primary battle against a sitting Republican.
Just think: 978 votes! If we could have gotten just 978 more Democratic votes in 1990, we could have been spared having Newt Gingrich as the Speaker of the House for much of the 1990’s, and his destruction of political discourse through grand-standing and name-calling.
I had to register for the draft in in 1986 thanks to Ronny Raygun. Idiot. I waited to register until I got a phone call from an attorney from the government saying that if I didn’t sign up I would be prosecuted.
@46
you need to get your facts right Mickey…President Carter re-established selective service registration in 1980.
nice try at throwing Reagan under the bus, but you TEH FAYLE.
@47
Reagan was president when I had to register. It was complete nonsense.
so blame Carter, he re-established it.
nevermind, Carter is a D, so it cant be his fault.
I forgot…continue with the echo chamber…
@49
Nah, Carter’s at fault as well. When I posted I was thinking about who was the idiot in charge when I had to register, not who was the idiot that got the draft restarted.