And the odds that we’ll get to somebody dropping the ni-CLANG word on President Obama took a really big step forward today, along with bonus misogyny to boot. They say a picture’s worth a thousands words, and judging from the latest Mike Lester political cartoon from the Rome (Ga.) News-Tribune, none of those words are fit to print in a gorram family blog like this one.
A new study out this week from the US Department of Education’s civil rights office (yes, Republicans, This Is A Thing) shows some depressing disparities in our educational system involving race and the way students are disciplined, as well as what courses students are offered.
Some of the most striking findings involved discipline: one in five African-American boys – and one in 10 African-American girls – was suspended from school during the study period, the 2009-10 school year.
Overall, African-American students are 3-1/2 times more likely to be suspended or expelled than their white peers. And 70 percent of students arrested or referred to law enforcement for disciplinary infractions are black or Latino, the study found. Other researchers have found that students who are repeatedly punished by being barred from campus are far more likely to drop out.
On a day where President Obama’s late mother is said to be copulating with a dog in an awful joke spread by a Montana federal judge, and Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Arizona is holding press conferences on national TV to announce the President’s birth certificate is a “forgery” we have Andrew Breitbart’s death, as covered earlier by ABL.
Here’s my problem. Andrew Breitbart did truly awful things. But his rehabilitation into a great guy begins with crap like this from David Frum:
Because President Obama was black, and because Breitbart believed in using every and any weapon at hand, Breitbart’s politics did inevitably become racially coded. Breitbart’s memory will always be linked to his defamation of Shirley Sherrod and his attempt to make a national scandal out of back payments to black farmers: the story he always called “Pigford” with self-conscious resonance.
Yet it is wrong to see Breitbart as racially motivated. Had Breitbart decided he hated a politician whose ancestors came over on the Mayflower, Breitbart would have been just as delighted to attack that politicians with a different set of codes. The attack was everything, the details nothing.
No. See, no. This is equivocating, self-serving, puerile bullshit of the highest magnitude right here, and it’s the major reason why the ruined wasteland of American journalism that Andrew Breitbart helped to create was allowed to happen because the people who clearly knew better gave him a pass anyway.
For all the readers out there who like to complain that Barack Obama is a tool of the wealthy, congratulations! The American Future Fund is spending $4 million in SuperPAC ads in nine swing states this month to push that exact message to help the Republicans.
The AFF offensive highlights Obama’s claim – in a2009 interview – that he didn’t “run for office to be helping out a bunch of fat cat bankers.” The conservative group points out in its new ad that the Obama administration has included a lineup of veterans of the financial services industry, including White House chiefs of staff Rahm Emanuel, Bill Daley and Jack Lew.
“His White House is full of Wall Street executives,” the spot says. “Now, Obama’s flush with cash, returning to Wall Street for more glitzy fundraisers … Obama won’t admit to supporting Wall Street, but Wall Street sure supports President Obama.”
The AFF television ads will run on cable in Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio and Virginia. That’s real money going onto the airwaves in real states from a group that spent heavily in the 2010 midterms, but which has yet to fully ramp up for the 2012 general election.
Posted in Election 2012? Oy vey!, Occupy Wall Street, Puritopians, Ratfvckery, Zandar
Tagged GOP hypocrisy, puritopians, Super PAC, wall street
I’m asking out of genuine curiosity about the opinions when it comes to 
Republican women and the birth control brouhaha. Short of The Distinguished Ladies From Maine wanting to see “final details” of President Obama’s rule changes to provide contraception coverage through insurance companies, I’ve heard basically nothing from prominent conservative women this week on, as Emily said below, the GOP’s trip back in time. It’s mind-blowingly obvious as to what I think about the sheer horror of it all, but I’m seriously trying to figure out if it’s silence that implies support (or silent rage), if it’s none of my damned business, or if I’m just completely missing something.
And as Charles Pierce notes, at least one GOP woman candidate is running on the whole thing being nothing more than a First Amendment issue, like the campaign of Sarah Steelman in Missouri.
Thinking to myself this weekend about President Obama’s brilliant move on birth control coverage , it’s occurred to me that the Supreme Court absolutely must have dealt with the question of religious liberties versus federal law before now, otherwise we would have heard this argument sooner.
On Twitter, Matt Yglesias was one step ahead of me and noted this 1990 Supreme Court decision on just how far a person’s First Amendment religious liberties go when it comes to resisting laws they don’t agree with morally. The case was Employment Division, Department of Human Resources of Oregon v. Smith, where two Oregon men were fired and denied unemployment benefits for using peyote.
The two men claimed that the law against peyote use violated their religious liberties because they consumed it as part of a Native American religious ceremony. The lower court in Oregon agreed and reversed the decision that denied them unemployment benefits. The State of Oregon appealed the case up to the Supreme Court. The 6-3 decision by the Supreme Court held the following (emphasis mine):
If GOP Gov. John Kasich got an ugly bloody nose from public unions last year and Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin and his GOP pals wanted to leave public unions bleeding in the street (only to now face the wrath of the state’s voters), Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer is by comparison sending wreaths and dry cleaning her little black dress for the occasion.
With a sweeping series of bills introduced Monday night in the state Senate, Republicans in Arizona hoped to make Wisconsin’s battle against public unions last year look like a lightweight sparring match.
So. The debt ceiling deal. Take a breath. Where do we go from here?
More than anything else I feel exhaustion from the ordeal. The TeaGOP took the country hostage and President Obama made the hard call to try to keep the damage as low as possible. The usual suspects are furious with POTUS. The deal itself manages to at best push the pain into 2013. It does cut spending in a recession and the trigger conditions will cut more even if the Super Committee doesn’t make serious cuts first.
But what President Obama really did was to buy us time to give him a better Congress. The sword of Damocles doesn’t fall until after the 2012 election. And if the TeaGOP is still in charge of the House then, well the deal will absolutely hurt a lot of Americans and our economy. But what this President did is put himself and his re-election on the line in order for us to try to give him the means to change this deal in 2013.
The only way out of this labyrinth of lunacy is to get rid of the TeaGOP infection that’s eating the body politic. And let’s keep in mind this is still a lousy deal that the country’s going to have to find a way to merely survive. There are no winners, only major categories of losers. The fact we’re even talking about serious budget cuts when we need stimulus right now assures that the country’s economic woes will absolutely continue well into the twenty teens.
But I for one plan to resolve this horrendous situation by getting rid of the Republicans responsible for it so it can then be fixed. It’s the only way out, winning in 2012.
Posted in Obama 2012: Yes We Will!, Zandar
Ahhh, Jon Walker of FireDogLake, how you conveniently save us valuable time with your logic gymnastics so that we don’t have to go looking for a way to pin the debt crisis on President Obama instead of douchebag Republicans.
If we reach August 2nd deadline with no hope of a deal President Obama will have only two choices.
Obama could choose follow the debt ceiling law and stop sending out some checks. Following the debt ceiling law would still mean actually breaking other laws that approved this spending. This is a move that could cause serious economic problems and effectively guaranty Obama lost the 2012 re-election.
Obama could use some means to get around or ignore the debt ceiling. He could mint a trillion dollar coin or use the 14th amendment to declare the debt ceiling unconstitutional. Going this route would likely avoid major economic problems.
Using the 14th amendment to declare the debt ceiling unconstitutional won’t be so a last minute extralegal contrived plan to avoid economic disaster. It is legitimate option supported by a plain reading of the text, the legislative history of the amendment and endorse by former President Bill Clinton.
Wait for it…wait for iiiiiiiit….
A true default crisis doesn’t just require nihilist madness from Congressional Republicans, it would take a similar level of insanity from Obama.
BAM! Post-coital cigarette time. Not only do we have PUMA lurve with “Big Dog woulda shown these Repunklicans a thing or three boy” but Obama’s insane for not unilaterally declaring MOAR PRESIDENTIAL POWAH and asserting Bush-like “unitary executive” stuff, which the EmoProgs hate President Obama for doing unless it serves their direct present needs.
Now personally, I think there’s merit in using the fourteenth amendment here as a last resort, but the larger point is President Obama should in no way need to go that route at all. The Republicans should vote to raise the debt ceiling as easily as they did under Bush, five separate times…and each time Eric Cantor, John Boehner, and Mitch McConnell voted yes.
The President should call them out on this and should continue to work towards a deal. If you haven’t noticed…he’s winning. Hmm, come to think of it people who should have noticed the President winning not noticing that, well, kinda the point of the post, eh?
Posted in Orange Julius, Puritopians, What the Crap!?, Zandar
Tagged debt ceiling crisis, Firedoglake, Jane Hamsher, John Boehner, Jon Walker, President Obama
