Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
Mmmm…things getting heated on the McChrystal/Afghanistan thing.
On Monday night, [House Speaker Nancy] Pelosi told Charlie Rose [Gen. Stanley McChrystal] “should go up the line of command” instead of publicly opining on strategy — prompting a swift, sneering reaction from the GOP committee.
Mocking the first female speaker as “General Pelosi,” an NRCC spokesman wrote, “If Nancy Pelosi’s failed economic policies are any indicator of the effect she may have on Afghanistan, taxpayers can only hope McChrystal is able to put her in her place.”
I’m thinking I would not have used those words, as they could be taken to mean something else by an opportunistic opponent. And indeed they were taken that way. By a Congresswoman with a mangled-up last name, predictably enough…
Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), who is close to Pelosi, could barely contain her anger.
“I think the place for a woman is at the top of the House of Representatives,” said Wasserman Schultz.
“It’s evidence they long for the days when a woman’s place was in the kitchen. Now a woman is third in line for the presidency… But it’s not surprising, coming from a party that’s 80 percent male and 100 percent white,” she added, referring to the composition of the House GOP conference.
NRCC Spokesman Ken Spain was unrepentant…: “Spare us the lectures and mock-outrage. The Speaker of the House is taking on a highly decorated general who has outlined a strategy in Afghanistan that she once claimed to advocate… [S]he’s playing out of her league and she knows it.”
The spokesman is challenging the qualifications of the House Speaker to opine authoritatively on military matters. He could be inferred to be acting out of sexist motives.
The Congresswoman is using the sex and skin-color characteristics of a caucus to disqualify that caucus. The spokesman has left it ambiguous what it is that makes him think Pelosi is unqualified and needing to be put in her place…not just a little bit ambiguous, but absolutely. In fact, there is every single indication available that he thinks Speaker Nan is just a big ol’ arrogant generic dummy — and would be just as big an arrogant dummy if she were a man.
The Congresswoman, on the other hand, has left nothing ambiguous whatsoever. She’s nailed down precisely what she doesn’t like about the people she’s criticizing. It is their race and their sex. It’s a statistical criticism, but it is clearly a primary one. These people need to keep their white male mouths shut because of what they are. No other reason offered.
The first thing is a tad bit ugly, but it’s politics. It’s quite silly in these days to think you can have a Washington, DC without power centers and factions wishing each other to be taken down a peg.
The second thing is ugly too. And it is not indispensable to politics; it is an unmistakable sign that something’s gone hideously wrong. Maybe this makes me naive, but I’m a little bit taken aback that we put up with it. Someone’s gotten just a little too comfortable with the “victim-card,” I think.
Update: Well, this is as interesting as things can possibly get, and I’m not too surprised to have found it:
On CBS’s Face the Nation, [Wasserman Schultz] declared Sarah Palin to be unready for the Vice Presidency. “She knows nothing…. Quite honestly, the interview I saw and that Americans saw on Thursday and Friday was similar to when I didn’t read a book in high school and had to read the Cliff’s Notes and phone in my report,” Wasserman Schultz said of Palin’s interview with ABC’s Charlie Gibson last week. “She’s Cliff-noted her performance so far.” [Politico.com 9/14/08]
So she’s sexist, racist, and has a princess-complex as well — she can freely engage in precisely the sort of criticism she denies others. And her criticism of the opposition is anything but constructive. She’s just griping. They aren’t doing right by her when they’re represented by white males, and obviously she isn’t any more pleased when they put a woman in a position of real power. She just wants to piss and moan. She is, in short, exactly the kind of representative our nation gets when too many people vote not out of concerns over actual policy, but rather to get their licks in at some despised demographic group. She is precisely what she calls others.
I’m shocked, Captain-Renault-shocked.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Little Debbie Wasserman, whose namesake invented the test for syphilis….
Well, you know.
- rob | 10/07/2009 @ 05:45