The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach

Category: politics

  • David Brooks is disingenuous, delusional, or an idiot

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    mongreldogs
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    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.…

  • Texas approves explicitly conservative curriculum

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    mongreldogs
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    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…

  • Reconciliation, in 90 seconds or less.

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    mongreldogs
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    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

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    mongreldogs
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    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.)

  • Our Broken Senate

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    mongreldogs
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    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? …

  • Shouting in the wind

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    mongreldogs
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    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…

  • Our (Even More) Broken Senate

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    mongreldogs
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    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…

  • A well-deserved smack-down on trials of terrorists

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    mongreldogs
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    Adam Serwer at TAPPED has a nice response to Richard Cohen’s latest hyperventilating bed-wetting over the upcoming trial of several terrorists.  I’m disappointed that NYC has successfully lobbied to have the trials held elsewhere, though I’m glad that the main reason seems to be that the extra security would be overly disruptive to city life…

  • Another Democrat making sense

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    mongreldogs
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    So why isn’t any of the so-called leadership — in the Capitol or in the Oval Office — listening? On the Huffington Post, Paul Begala offers his own, lucid take on the choice facing Democrats:  Pass the Senate bill, or collapse completely come November.  It’s worth the time to read. Now, here’s hoping the Democrats…

  • Finally, a Democrat starts making sense.

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    mongreldogs
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    David Plouffe, campaign adviser to the Obama campaign and author of Audacity to Win, has written a much-needed op-ed in the Washington Post.  In it, he outlines the shape of a legislative strategy that would allow the Democrats to survive the coming midterm elections.  It’s worth a full read but the bullet-point summary is Pass…