The Open Thread for Tuesday July 30, 2013
If immigration reform is going to get done, this is why:
“More than 100 Republican donors — many of them prominent names in their party’s establishment — sent a letter to Republican members of Congress on Tuesday urging them to support an overhaul of the nation’s immigration laws,” the New York Times reports.
But it will only get done if these donors not only threaten the withholding of their big money donations, but also start doing it. Defunding the RNC and other various Republican Party organizations and candidates is the only message Republican congressman will understand. Condemnations about their bigotry and racism doesn’t work because, in their circles and in their districts, their racism and bigotry are commonplace and not a source of shame. And they no longer care about losing all of the Latino vote since they have convinced themselves that they can somehow win all of the white vote.
On Pope Francis:
Byron York on the GOP being too divided to have a civil war:
“It’s more likely that this is just a rocky time for a rejected and confused party. The conflicts inside the GOP today just don’t line up in the configuration of a classic civil war. There are multiple issues involved, and the lawmakers on various sides of various issues don’t lean the same way on each issue. Republicans who are opponents on one issue are allies on another. Looking at the Senate, for example, it’s unlikely that there will be a total civil war between Senate Faction A and Senate Faction B when some members of the opposing factions are united in Faction C, or Faction D, or so on. In other words, it may be that the Republican party is too divided to have a real civil war. Perhaps chaos would be a better description. We’ll know more later.”
This is true. The Democrats never really had a civil war either during our down years from 1969 utnil 1992, as there were not just two sides fighting each other, but twelve.
The Baton Rouge Advocate has found at least a dozen cases where gay men “who merely discussed or agreed to have consensual sex with an undercover agent” have been arrested “based on a part of Louisiana’s anti-sodomy law that was struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court a decade ago.” If this is true, the every single police officer and prosecutor involved must not only be fired, but sued, both criminally and civilly, for civil rights violations for each act of arrest and prosecution. The police officers and prosecutors must not only be imprisoned, but they must lose all their material possessions as well. Their lives must be destroyed. Maybe that will teach a lesson to the bigots out there who seek to misuse the government to abuse the constitutional rights of others.
Classic DD
If there’s one thing we won’t accept, it’s over-reaction. Anyone who over-reacts should be hung and, before death, cut down, drawn and quartered and have his entrails eaten by dogs and pigs. Why? Because we’re merciful, that’s why.
The Guardian is live blogging the Bradley Manning verdict:
• not guilty of aiding the enemy
• guilty of five espionage charges
• guilty of five theft charges
Here’s a shocker. Turns out that Indiana’s charter school ratings were changed to benefit huge GOP donor:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/07/30/1227577/-Charter-School-Owned-By-GOP-Donor-Gets-Grade-Rigged-By-Tony-Bennett
Wow. I thought that everything concerning charter schools was on the up-and-up.
BTW, the guy who did the rigging in Indiana?
He’s now in charge of Florida’s schools & selling the same ol’ snake oil.
Yes, Geek, but you will notice that I left them alive, thereby adhering to your rule of thumb.
El Som mentioned Florida, so here’s a story from Florida that should make anyone sick to their stomach.
Yeah, LeBay, the Bush Brothers were among the earliest pushers of private prison health care. Betcha THOSE contracts were awarded w/o political influence…
…or not:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/02/17/187864/-Bush-Willeford-Bankrupt-Prison-Health-Care-16M-Missing
http://archives.econ.utah.edu/archives/pen-l/2002m04.2/msg00118.html
This is for cass, who put up a thread for “what are you reading” about a week to ten days ago.
I finally finished “The Orphan Master’s Son,” and truly you’d enjoy this book. Despite a few missteps at the end (at little too drawn out over the last thirty pages when you already know what’s going to happen), the book is a tour de force not only a picture of North Korean society, but also as deadly accurate funhouse mirror presentation of the way other cultures perceive us. In the second half of the book he plays at deconstructing both linear time and linear narration in the most effective fashion I have seen in years, while never losing sight of his plot. At times the author is a little too cute (because there are NO coincidences in this book, ever), but that is insignificant carping against the sheer narrative power of the novel.
Part Jorges Luis Borges, part John Steinbeck, part Franz Kafka, and perhaps even part Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, this is an amazing book.
What if men were defined by how they used their big head? What it be a civil rights violation to call someone or their ideas ‘stupid’ , ‘flawed’, or fundementaly… Wait.. Fund the mentally wrong? That sums it up
Just because you think you’re smart and believe something doesn’t make it true. People don’t have to accept/respect your views just because you think them real real hard. You aren’t entitled to your own reality.
So no, it isn’t a civil rights violation to call out stupidity. It’s moving the species forward.
@ Steve — Borges! I’m so there! I put this book on an Amazon order shortly after you recommended it, so it is already queued up. Will move it to the top of the list now.
Thanks for the review!