Wednesday Open Thread
Welcome to the Wednesday edition of your open thread. Don’t forget – Drinking Liberally tomorrow in Rehoboth. Mark your calendars!
Do you know who the real victim of the Shirley Sherrod fiasco is? Fox News! It’s so mean for people to call them racist, just because they showed a video meant to ruin a woman’s reputation – because she’s black.
Fox News’ Brit Hume delivered a commentary on Special Report with Bret Baier, where demanded that the media apologize to Fox News for calling them racist. Fox wants an apology from the NAACP, Howard Dean, and Shirley Sherrod. Hume said, “You might think all this would be the stuff of further apologies.”
…
Hume said, “As victims of unfair media treatment go, Shirley Sherrod got off easy. Within 24 hours or so from her forced resignation from the agriculture department, she’s been apologized to, offered a new job, and later even got a call from the president himself. All of this the result of a truncated Internet videotape that made it appear she had once done less than her best for a white farmer because of his race. It was unfair, and the apologies were deserved, but the initial rush to judge Sherrod was not the only rush to judgment in this affair.”
Hume then went in circles trying to spin away FNC’s responsibility for this, “Consider, Sherrod herself said she was ordered last Monday to resign immediately by a senior Agriculture official who said Sherrod was going to be on Glenn Beck’s Fox program that night. In fact, Beck did not say a word about Sherrod until the next night when he defended her. Bill O’Reilly called for her to step down on Monday, but by her account she had already quit before he spoke, and O’Reilly apologized the next night. Indeed, Shirley Sherrod was not mentioned on Fox News Channel or Foxnews.com either until after the Obama administration had forced her out, and no news as opposed to opinion broadcast on Fox ever accused Sherrod of racism, but she blamed Fox and accused the network of racism, so did numerous others including the NAACP, and former Democratic Chairman Howard Dean on Fox News Sunday though it became clear from Chris Wallace’s question that Dean had no idea what the facts were. You might think all this would be the stuff of further apologies. Somehow, I’m not holding my breath.”
By the way, Glenn Beck apologized to Shirley Sherrod by calling her a Marxist
I feel their pain. 🙄
I can’t believe I missed this story. Some county officials in California were paying themselves 6-figure salaries but asking residents to take service cuts.
City Council members in Bell unanimously agreed Monday to give up their controversial $96,000-a-year salaries and instead draw $673 a month — a 90% decrease.
…
A Times report revealed that the city’s top officials received some of the highest municipal wages in the nation. City Administrative Officer Robert Rizzo made $787,637 a year, almost twice the salary of President Obama; Police Chief Randy Adams made $457,000, 50% more than Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck; and Assistant City Manager Spaccia made $376,288, more than the top administrator for Los Angeles County.
All three resigned last week.
In agreeing to sweep back their salaries, Councilmen Luis Artiga and George Mirabal put themselves on par with Lorenzo Velez, who has been paid $673 a month since he was appointed to the council last summer. Velez said he was unaware his colleagues were making so much.
The scam was that they would supplement their pay by serving on “boards.” California AG Jerry Brown is investigating. I doubt this is the end of this story.
Tags: Open Thread
Selena Gomez, looking happy not to be going to Delaware. Watch the first few minutes to check out the voicebox gimmick – do you think she has really lost her voice?
They resigned cause they weren’t working for that pittance.
BTW Where’s the big bru ha ha over PSA?
Judge partially blocks implementation of the SB1070 immigration law in Arizona.
PDF of decision
Washington Post has a great article on political attack ads. How many of these do you remember?
Dutch Wonderland was fabulous yesterday–and jason–I saw many of your relatives, I’m sure the shunning will be lifted soon, if you would just see the error of your ways :).
Zing!
Wow, that Selena Gomez clip was painful. I am going down tonight with my disappointed 9 year old. I have this fear that I am going to get there and see a flock of crying 7-10 year olds that didn’t get the news that the concert was canceled and their parents will be consoling them to no avail.
The voice chip in Disney’s Selena-tron 5,000 needs to be debugged.
My daughter is just 6, and thankfully has no idea who Selena Gomez is. I’m afraid of what will happen in a few years, though …
“The parts of the law that the judge blocked included the sections that called for officers to check a person’s immigration status while enforcing other laws and that required immigrants to carry their papers at all times. Judge Bolton put those sections on hold until the issues are resolved by the courts.”
Either the reporter blew it or the Judge failed to realize the Federal Law requires immigrants to carry their “papers” (ID and proof of status).
Israeli arab village razed. 300 homeless.
These are Israeli citizens. But I don’t suppose Biden would object.
Under a little-noticed provision of the recently passed financial-reform legislation, the Securities and Exchange Commission no longer has to comply with virtually all requests for information releases from the public, including those filed under the Freedom of Information Act.
Beach replenishment is welfare for rich white people.
$8 million of our hard earned tax money to help save the man’s real estate investments. Huzzah!
Here’s why we’ll become extinct in the next 200 years, if not sooner:
“Microscopic phytoplankton that form the foundation of the marine food chain are declining, according to a new Canadian study that indicates that the ocean’s ecosystem and fisheries could be changing.
Phytoplankton are also major sources of oxygen to the atmosphere.”
Basically, it will be a slow suffocation as we destroy the earth’s lungs and the concentration of oxygen in the atmosphere won’t be high enough to sustain higher life forms. Meltdowns of abandoned nuclear reactors will seal the deal.
Have a good day.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/plankton-the-base-of-the-oceans-food-web-steadily-declining/article1654702/
The Earth will be fine without us. And who knows, in a million years, maybe the next iteration of intelligent life will be able to avoid creating a Ronald Reagan.
Depends how you define “fine.” A radioactive earth cannot sustain life carbon-based life as currently evolved. DNA cannot be the basis for reproduction when it is constantly being shredded to bits by sub-atomic particles. A planet or universe without life to observe it essentially no longer exists.
But, perhaps after a few billion years, the planet will become inhabitable again. A guy can dream, can’t he?
What do you guys think of the SEC FOIA exemption in the new finance reform law? nice and ‘transparent’ that is.
Coons/Castle Civility Gives David Broder a Bi-partisan Boehner
-The “Dean” of Washington political journos comes to Delaware and leaves loving Castle and Coons.
– Utterly ignores the existence of Christine O’Donnell. And,
– Gets Castle on the record saying that he is going to vote against the Republican in the Senate.
I love the way Castle takes for granted that he will be the next Senator.
“What do you guys think of the SEC FOIA exemption in the new finance reform law? nice and ‘transparent’ that is.”
Here’s the deal, Phil — what’s the point in bitching about Democratic cupidity on issues where the Republicans would do even worse? Republican mouthpieces these days are actually pretending to be populists — complaining about lack of job growth, for example. When in living memory have Republicans ever cared about job creation? They’ve usually been about corporate health, jobs be damned. But we’ve got a “jobless recovery” going on (actually what we’ve got is a realignment of the labor force away from manufacturing, but that’s another story). Corporate profits are recovering nicely, but they can’t say that because their narrative is “Democrats fuck up everything they touch.”
So yeah, it sucks that we don’t have a progressive president. But guess what? We probably never will. Progressives (or liberals, or whatever you want to call them) are about 30% of the population, just like conservatives. I refuse to make the Nader Error of claiming the parties are exactly alike. One is worse than the other, and that’s the one I’ll save my ammunition to fire at.
Geezer asks, “What’s the point in bitching about Democratic cupidity on issues where the Republicans would do even worse?”
The point is that if we don’t complain, the Democrats will behave even MORE like Republickings.
Damn, Steaksauce (re: 8:48PM comment from yesterday), do you tell bedtime and children stories, too?
Unfortunately, I can only wish that article were only a story. One of the biggest concerns was the theory that the global ocean currents (deeper currents that, among other things, create upwelling conditions) would be slowed, if not stopped, as the oceans begin to warm. There’s been a lot of talk about the air temps this year, all around the Northern Hemisphere. The oceans have logged quite a warm year, too.
Geezer, you’re right, Republicans haven’t cared about jobs. People need to realize that neither the Dems or the Repubs have helped anything in decades. Both sides are pulling the constitution thinking they are right, without realizing that they are ripping itt down the middle. At least I hope that they don’t realize it.
We need to try and find a way to help people without infringing on others rights and property. I guess the optimal middle ground would be a progressive libertarianism.
You had great positive ideas there. I did a search on the issue and found nearly all peoples will agree with your blog. But not many babies sleep well.