The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach

Category: Health of the Republic

  • Wow. Just… wow.

    http://www.marktalk.com/blog/?p=10387

    (Also hosted at Political Correction, in case the original gets “disappeared”, and reproduced below the fold here — although apparently it’s already been edited.)

    I don’t really know really even to begin to comment on this “letter” from Tea Party Express chairman Mark Williams.  It takes something really, um, special to answer charges of racism by claiming that the N.A.A.C.P. is the one who’s racist. But the real kicker is the letter per se — a mock letter from N.A.A.C.P. president Benjamin Jealous, in which the mock-Jealous writes to Abraham Lincoln to request the repeal of the 13th and 14th amendments.  (Aside: What is it with these Tea Party fanatics and amendment repeal?)

    Now, the truly Crowning Moment of Jerkitude comes in signing the letter with “Tom’s nephew”.  It takes a certain gumption — but not the good kind — to label a civil rights leader with “Uncle Tom”.

    (more…)

  • Excellent headline explaining why we’re headed for the next Great Depression

    Bravo, Paul Krugman!

    “The Invisible Bond Vigilantes Continue Their Invisible Attack”

    Could we call this the phantom menace?  🙂

    The Invisible Bond Vigilantes Continue Their Invisible Attack

  • The President and the Ring

    I hate to turn into just a site that reposts The Daily Show but sometimes they’re spot on.  The continued failure of President Obama to live up to his pre-election rhetoric on the rule of law is the most galling development of his administration.

    The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c
    Respect My Authoritah
    www.thedailyshow.com
    Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

  • Seconded…

    This piece from the Atlantic captures my feeling pretty close to exactly, re: the recent Rand Paul flap on the Civil Rights Act and his alleged “courage”.  In particular, the conclusion:

    Now, after the police dogs, night-sticks and fire-hoses have been beaten back, Rand Paul wants to reopen the question, while, to be sure, claiming that he would have had the “courage to march with Martin Luther King.” This is a common strain of courage. It chiefly shines through in men born 50 years too late. Presently among the crowd, they are distinguished at that decisive moment when queried about wars they won’t have to fight, in times they will never live. These men populate our history books. They are all on the wrong side.

    Devastating.

  • A fantastic visual response to “Show us your papers” in AZ…

    An editorial cartoon responding to the Arizona immigration law
    An editorial cartoon responding to the Arizona immigration law

    From the cartoonist Lee Judge ( http://media.kansascity.com/images/cartoons/judge/04-2010/judge_04272010_700.jpg)

  • 16,500 : a “mistake” so egregious as to be a lie

    Where did the rabid right get the figure of 16,500 new “IRS agents” that (they claim) will be required to enforce the individual mandate in the Affordable Care Act?

    They made it up.

    Really.  It came from nowhere.  In fact, the IRS will add few or no agents, and perhaps hardly any staff at all.  There’s a really nice dissection of this ludicrous claim over at factcheck.org.  Basically, the number was invented based on a bad estimate, inflated through dubious assumptions, and then just hand-waved into fact.

    Just remember, the next time someone quotes to you some scary scary provision of the ACA: There’s a non-negligible chance that they are lying or repeating a lie.

  • Quote of the Day

    From a comment on Political Animal, in a thread about a brick-thrower who wants to “end socialism and the government takeover”, and has time to do so because he’s receiving disability checks from the government.  In describing the futility of explaining this contradiction to the brick-thrower, a commenter pointed out,

    You can’t reason someone out of a position they didn’t reason themselves into.

    And that is the actual greatest threat to the Republic today: The noisy whiners who don’t know anything factual and are proud of it.  How does an Enlightenment democracy function, when one side denies the value of both logic and evidence?

  • Health care reform passes

    So, against all expectation, the Democratic Party managed to hang together and finally pass the comprehensive health care bill.

    As a lifelong Democrat, I am flabbergasted. I was certain they’d find a way to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory and fumble on the proverbial one-yard line. I’m glad to be disappointed, but this long, ugly process has exposed disturbing trends in this nation. It’s still possible that this will be the high-water mark of a great republic.

    Though their target is incorrect, the Tea Partiers ironically have a point: the Republic does face a crisis. It’s not driven by phantasmical jackbooted insurance inspectors breaking into homes and dragging Grandma off to mythical death panels. It stems from the unholy matrimony among a slick ideological establishment; sensationalist, irresponsible, and manipulative 24 hour “news” media; and an angry, incoherent, willfully-ignorant populace. Though these people claim to revere the Founders, they in fact stand opposed to the core of Enlightenment democracy that was bequeathed to us: an informed and educated citizenry engaged in reasoned debate — with passion, to be sure, but never abandoning reason and never so cocksure as to assume that opponents must be enemies.

    Considering that the Tea Partiers have labeled rule by majority vote “tyranny”, it’s hard to see how anything resembling the United States of America could survive their rage.  Their unifying feature is anger and it will burn everything it can reach.  And the Republican Party stands on the sideline and feeds it, a mixture of cynical arsonist and maniacal six-year-old.

    How can a deliberative legislature — how can a functioning democracy — endure when one side has abandoned argument and evidence?  When one side decides that anything their opponents say must be untrue?  If one side locks itself in its own fantasy world and declares invalid any source that might challenge its funhouse-mirror self-reality?

  • David Brooks is disingenuous, delusional, or an idiot

    Today, David Brooks had a column on the Op-Ed page of the New York Times.  It’s pretty much a standard Brooks piece, bemoaning the lack of civility in Washington today.  It is wrong on its facts and wrong on its interpretations and laughably wrong on its understanding of politics.

    • Ezra Klein takes it down analytically.
    • Jonathan Chait takes it apart with the devastating mockery it so richly deserves.

    The health care debate has revealed not only how dysfunctional our national politics is.  It’s exposed how vapid and worthless the self-appointed pundits and intelligentsia have become.

    (I also have to say how taken aback I am at how nakedly the professional punditry is willing to scoff at such a radical principle as “rule by simple majority”, which Brooks derides in no uncertain terms.  Isn’t rule of the majority more or less what we mean by democracy?)

  • Texas approves explicitly conservative curriculum

    The writing was on the wall for a while, but Texas just approved a revision to its history curriculum.  It has an explicit conservative bent — I mean, literally, students are to learn about “the conservative resurgence of the 1980s and 1990s, including Phyllis Schlafly, the Contract With America, the Heritage Foundation, the Moral Majority and the National Rifle Association.”

    Because it is such a large market and has a very central purchasing authority, Texas carries a lot of weight with textbook publishers, meaning that students of many states will receive textbooks crafted to meet the Texas requirements.  (California is an even larger market but is not buying new books for a long while due to its ongoing slow meltdown.)

    Am I worried?  Less than might be expected by people who know me.  Why?  Because I’m a teacher.  I have learned that the easiest way to cause students to reject any piece of knowledge is to proclaim it loudly in a textbook.  Especially with an increasingly distrustful and tech-savvy student population, attempts to ram down an official line on anything seem likely to fail.