Weekend Open Thread
Welcome to the weekend edition of your open thread. The thread is yours.
Fox News and the far right have worked themselves into a frenzy of the New Black Panthers. It’s beginning to creep into the mainstream news, which is a shame because it’s a fake controversy.Even conservative Bush appointees agree that this is a fantasy.
A scholar whom President George W. Bush appointed as vice chairwoman of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, Abigail Thernstrom has a reputation as a tough conservative critic of affirmative action and politically correct positions on race.
But when it comes to the investigation that the Republican-dominated commission is now conducting into the Justice Department’s handling of an alleged incident of voter intimidation involving the New Black Panther Party — a controversy that has consumed conservative media in recent months — Thernstrom has made a dramatic break from her usual allies.
“This doesn’t have to do with the Black Panthers; this has to do with their fantasies about how they could use this issue to topple the [Obama] administration,” said Thernstrom, who said members of the commission voiced their political aims “in the initial discussions” of the Panther case last year.
“My fellow conservatives on the commission had this wild notion they could bring Eric Holder down and really damage the president,” Thernstrom said in an interview with POLITICO.
The “controversy” is so absurd it’s hard to describe it. During the 2008 elections, two men who identified themselves as members of the New Black Panthers Party stood outside a precinct. One had a nightstick. Republican poll-watchers complained. The Bush Justice Department did not pursue any charges because no actual voters complained.
That’s it. That’s all I know. I find it rather telling that Republicans somehow think this will bring down Obama and Holder. Why? Because the NBP are African-American? Because Holder didn’t pursue the case after Alberto Gonzales didn’t either?
You’ve probably already heard about the Utah “illegal immigrant” list that got sent to law enforcement and media outlets. Two state workers have been suspended pending investigation. I think this is just the tip of the iceberg.
Two employees with the Department of Workforce Services have been put on leave after an investigation revealed that they apparently accessed records on hundreds of Utah residents to compile a list of 1,300 names of people purportedly in the country illegally.
A handful of other DWS workers also may have been part of the effort and are the subject of an ongoing probe.
“This tactic by these rogue employees to go out and single out individuals and their families and, in some cases, falsely accusing people of an illegal status is in fact deplorable and is in fact counterproductive to the issue that ought to be the focus, which is the illegal immigration issue,” Gov. Gary Herbert said at a press conference.
The two workers were escorted from the state office building where they worked and are on administrative leave pending the completion of the full investigation, said Kristen Cox, Department of Workforce Services executive director. She said it is uncertain if their leave would be unpaid.
“We feel very confident that we have identified the core group,” she said. “The people we’ve identified certainly have strong political opinions and have frustration around the issue of immigration. … If they want to go rogue, they need to quit the department.”
I think what will be interesting to learn is how the compiled the list and how they determined that these people were in the country illegally (at least some were legal immigrants).
Tags: Open Thread
…if they want to ‘go rogue’….where have I heard a similar expression before???? Oh, yes, on the cover of a book at the Dollar Store. I suppose ‘going rogue’ is all the rage west of the Missippi this season.
Has anyone else noticed that all that credit card junk mail we used to get, is now being replaced by auto/life insurance junk mail? I swear I don’t remember getting all this stuff before.
Doug Suiter withdrew from the NCCo 1st District race, killing that Republican primary matchup.
Hmmm…that’s a surprise Smitty. I heard that Sauer was a big guy in the Republican party, perhaps that’s the reason?
The periodic table of irrational nonsense
I love that scientology has a WOO number of 116.
Comment by Unstable Isotope on 17 July 2010 at 8:16 pm:
The periodic table of irrational nonsense
“irrational nonsense” is redundant.
When the hell is the beach Drinking Liberally?
I’m starting to take this silence as a personal slight.
July 29th at the Purple Parrot in Rehoboth. We will be in the new Beirgarten.
I wonder if Dave will cover the Rehoboth DL in Coastal Sussex Weekly?
Everybody should read the article in today’s News-Journal about the Feds investigating Minner’s sweetheart deals on Rt. 1:
http://www.delawareonline.com/article/20100718/NEWS02/7180356/Feds-dig-for-truth-on-Del-1-deal
The Delaware Way is the ultimate corrupting factor in this state, and this article includes many of the usual suspects, including some with whom you may not be familiar. Like Ralph Reeb, a ‘make-it-happen’ guy at DELDOT. Also, corporate/government fixer Nathan Hayward, whose family lineage has lots of duPont blood in it; Mark Brainard, political aparatchik extraordinaire for the likes of Tom Sharp, Ruth Ann Minner, and now Lonnie George; and, as usual, the ‘unavailable for comment’ by-now disgraced former Governor.
People who tell me that I come across increasingly angry on the blog should understand that this is what fuels my anger. I’m afraid that, if I lose that anger, the spotlight will fade on these sorts of shenanigans.
Maybe, just maybe, a diligent auditor would be a public whistleblower on stuff like this.
Failing that, a diligent press and a populace that pays attention are our best defenses. I just do what little I can to encourage that attention.
UI: I laughed so hard at the periodic table that I think I might have broken a rib. It’s also very educational — I had never heard of several of the “elements” and had to look them up.
I suppose the next step would be to combine the elements into molecules — for instance, Christianity, Creationism and Conspiracy Theories would combine to make up Palinism.
“Maybe, just maybe, a diligent auditor would be a public whistleblower on stuff like this.”
Isn’t that the truth.
Obummer’s latest recess appointment… in the grand tradition of Jack Kevorkian:
Berwick has publicly stated that he loves [the British NHS], a sentiment that he has also put in writing: “I am romantic about the National Health Service; I love it.” Even worse, he goes on to say that his affection for Great Britain’s socialized medical system is inspired by his loathing for its American counterpart: “All I need to do to rediscover the romance is to look at health care in my own country.” This doesn’t leave much doubt about where Berwick stands on rationing and what sort of rationing he favors.
Which brings us back to the good doctor’s personal coverage. Before Obama picked him to be our new Medicare czar, Berwick was the chief executive officer of an outfit he founded called the Institute for Health Care Improvement (IHI). IHI bills itself as a nonprofit charity, but it seems to do an awful lot of work on behalf of for-profit entities. As CEO of this enterprise, Dr. Berwick earned a cool $2.3 million in 2008. But, more to the point, IHI will provide him with private health care coverage during his declining years: “The Institute created a postretirement health benefit plan for its chief executive officer (CEO). It provides the CEO and his spouse medical insurance from retirement until death.”
In other words, Dr. Berwick has made sure that he and his wife will never be subjected to the tender mercies of Medicare, the health care program for seniors over which he now has control. Thus, even after he has implemented rationing programs modeled after those of NICE, he won’t have to worry about his wife suffering for lack of drugs deemed too pricey by some obscure comparative effectiveness calculation.
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/donald-berwicks-motto-rationing-for-thee-but-not-for-me/2/
That’s cool. The President has been at war with the base, so maybe he wants to propose terms.
Let’s hear all the people screaming at me for wanting to kill this disaster of an HCR bill defend this, particularly you, cassandra_m: “Changing Stance, Administration Now Defends Insurance Mandate as a Tax”
What a bold-face liar Obomba is. Now forcing people to pay money to fund the profits of insurance companies and their fat cat executives is a “government tax,” something he flatly denied when he was trying to get the bill passed:
“When Congress required most Americans to obtain health insurance or pay a penalty, Democrats denied that they were creating a new tax. But in court, the Obama administration and its allies now defend the requirement as an exercise of the government’s “power to lay and collect taxes.”
While Congress was working on the health care legislation, Mr. Obama refused to accept the argument that a mandate to buy insurance, enforced by financial penalties, was equivalent to a tax.
“For us to say that you’ve got to take a responsibility to get health insurance is absolutely not a tax increase,” the president said last September, in a spirited exchange with George Stephanopoulos on the ABC News program “This Week.”
When Mr. Stephanopoulos said the penalty appeared to fit the dictionary definition of a tax, Mr. Obama replied, “I absolutely reject that notion.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/18/health/policy/18health.html?_r=1&ref=politics
Utah Welfare list? I thought the majority in AZ, NM, TX, NV, UT, CO, OK, on Welfare, are old school Mormons who still practice polygamy with underage girls and send these girls in to get a check. You should see some of the palace homes that are paid with welfare checks.