The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach

Category: politics

  • Quote of the Day … it’s a little petty but delicious nonetheless

    Posted as a comment in a Political Animal article on Mitt Romney’s increasingly desperate gyrations attempting to stay relevant:

    In fact, the conservative “movement” resembles a clique in junior high school these days. They shout during assemblies, make fun of gay people, and do nothing but posture in front of each other, trying to see who can look the most “bad-ass.” And they get shitty grades because they watch too much Fox News and slack off in science lab. And they don’t know anything about history. And they’re counting on their rich parents saving them.

    Meanwhile, the rest of the country just got an advanced degree from Harvard.

    Posted by: chrenson on March 22, 2010 at 4:22 PM

  • 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?

  • The rising threat to music of the home taping phenomenon

    This video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3jkUhG68wY&feature=player_embedded) is a hilarious take-down of the music publishing industry’s allegation that personal filesharing is “killing” music.  Part of the fun is figuring out the early 1980s references.  Also, I would totally buy a flag that had that cassette-and-crossbones logo…

    Also, remember that according to former MPAA chief Jack Valenti,

    [T]he VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone.

    Not that the content cartels would ever condone the use of overblown and hyperbolic language to frighten lawmakers into writing into law special rights to protect their outmoded business models…

  • 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.

  • Reconciliation, in 90 seconds or less.

    This video gives an explanation of the process of reconciliation vis a vis the health care bill. It’s brief, lucid, and informative. Needless to say, it won’t get airplay or attention. *sigh*

  • Idiot Quote of the Day

    I don’t usually like to post these, but this one from Mary Matalin just floored me:

    The majority vote is tyranny of the minority.

    I agree that context is everything, so please, go ahead and read the whole bit.  (You’ll have to search through the transcript; I’ll wait.) (more…)

  • Our Broken Senate

    Update: Also, news comes that Senator Richard Shelby has placed a blanket hold on Obama administration appointments, apparently as part of a plan to extort pork for his state.  With Scott Brown having been seated, the

    Is the Senate broken?  Or is the recent fretting over the filibuster just myopic whining that misunderstands our history?  The following graphs and links indicate that, in fact, the Senate is broken — the filibuster has been deployed more often, than before.  Details below the fold.

    (more…)

  • Shouting in the wind

    I know I’m not going to convince anybody, and this is far from the most important place to make this point, but I feel like I have to weigh in:

    Record snowfall does not “disprove” global warming.

    To advance the opposite proposition seriously, you’d have to do one or more of the following:

    • Fail to understand the different between “global” and “local”.  Being cold here says nothing about the global aggregate.
    • Fail to understand that “weather” is not the same thing as “climate” and that transient variations in daily conditions do not equate to long-term large averages.
    • Be in the pocket of Big Oil and other industries with a vested interest in making sure we do nothing, ever, because it might someday mean that they reap only ridiculous profit levels rather than the truly obscene ones they get now.

    More than likely, most people braying that this is God’s message to Al Gore are committing all three mistakes at once.

  • Our (Even More) Broken Senate

    News comes that Senator Richard Shelby has placed a blanket hold on Obama administration appointments, apparently as part of a plan to extort pork for his state.  With Scott Brown having been seated, the chance of cloture on these holds seems remote.  So the Senate is even more broken.  The danger is that this will accelerate our move towards government by other means, including increased use of recess appointments.

    Oh, and what the heck is a hold?  David Waldeman explains.

    Also: a pretty funny reimagining of the note that Shelby must have given Harry Reid and the President.