Welcome to dull, dreary Monday after a dull, dreary Sunday. I guess we’re going to be getting rain for the first half of the week. Not the way I want to start my week. It’s time for an open thread, so let the sunshine in!
Republicans don’t care about governing and Americans are starting to notice:
It’s clear that Democrats genuinely believe they are in a strong position in the standoff over financial regulatory reform. To explain why, a Democrat points me to the internals of the new Economist poll, which show that less than a fourth of respondents think Republicans are providing constructive policy alternatives in dealing with Dems:
In your opinion, do the Republicans in Congress…
Mostly provide constructive policy alternatives 24%
Mostly just oppose the other party 52%
Not sure 24%It also finds that barely more than a fourth think Republicans are providing construtive policy alternatives in dealing with Obama:
In dealing with President Obama, do you think the Republicans in Congress…
Mostly provide constructive policy alternatives 27%
Mostly just oppose the President 50%
Not sure 23%
We will see in November if Democrats have made their case. I think we need to see a bigger economic recovery before Democrats start breathing easier.
This post at Balloon Juice by DougJ is interesting:
But to pretend that this doesn’t happen, in some form, every day on every show on television is absurdly naive, even for an adult Tolkien reader. You’ve heard it before but here’s a partial list of people who lost their jobs for not being sufficiently psyched about Operation Iraqi Freedom: Bill Maher, Ashleigh Banfield, Phil Donahue. NBC wouldn’t rebroadcast the clip of Sinead O’Connor tearing up a picture of the pope. (And her reasons for doing so were so crazy, in retrospect, weren’t they?) I’ll stop now, but I could go on.
When it happens because of right-wing American complaints, it’s called family values or patriotism. When it happens because of Muslim complaints, it’s called censorship.
Censorship is an American tradition. Yes, it’s been a bit strange to see the right wing get up in a froth about Mohammed cartoons when they threw parties to destroy Dixie Chicks CDs.