February 28th, 2008
Tom McMahon says he DOESN’T LIKE ME anymore.
Just because I dissed Bill Buckley.
OK, Tom. I’ll admit to being old and bitter, but not shriveled up (although I would do well to shrivel away about 20 pounds).
February 28th, 2008
Mr. Straight Talk was born in the Panama Canal Zone, which raises constitutional QUESTIONS about his eligibility to run for president.
On behalf of Barack Obama, I say let McCain run. Please, let him run. Please.
February 27th, 2008
That’s what this chaplain to California politicians SAYS.
February 27th, 2008
The Republican Party here in Illinois would never try THIS STUFF, mainly because it would backfire.
But the GOP in Tennessee recognizes that its constituents are a little less sophisticated than their counterparts in the Land of Lincoln.
February 27th, 2008
Spare me the tearful eulogies for conservative icon William F. Buckley, who died today at the age of 82.
Buckley and his magazine, National Review, have a shameful history of promoting racism.
To wit, consider these gems:
In a 1957 editorial titled ”Why the South Must Prevail,” the National Review said:
The central question that emerges . . . is whether the White community in the South is entitled to take such measures as are necessary to prevail, politically and culturally, in areas in which it does not prevail numerically? The sobering answer is Yes — the White community is so entitled because, for the time being, it is the advanced race. It is not easy, and it is unpleasant, to adduce statistics evidencing the cultural superiority of White over Negro: but it is a fact that obtrudes, one that cannot be hidden by ever-so-busy egalitarians and anthropologists.
Also in 1957, segregationist Sen. Richard Russell had this to say in Buckley’s magazine:
As you know… there are some communities and some states where the Negro’s voting potential is very great. We wish at all costs to avoid a repetition of the Reconstruction period when newly freed slaves made the laws and undertook their enforcement. We feel even more strongly about miscegenation or racial amalgamation.
The experience of other countries and civilizations has demonstrated that the separation of the races biologically is highly preferable to amalgamation.
I know of nothing in human history that would lead us to conclude that miscegenation is desirable.
In 1963, the magazine carried this reaction to the murderous bombing of a black church in Birmingham:
Let us gently say the fiend who set off the bomb does not have the sympathy of the white population in the South; in fact, he set back the cause of the white people there so dramatically as to raise the question whether in fact the explosion was the act of a provocateur — of a Communist, or of a crazed Negro.
And let it be said that the convulsions that go on, and are bound to continue, have resulted from revolutionary assaults on the status quo, and a contempt for the law, which are traceable to the Supreme Court’s manifest contempt for the settled traditions of Constitutional practice. Certainly it now appears that Birmingham’s Negroes will never be content so long as the white population is free to be free.
There are many more such examples of Buckley’s racism, but you get the point.
February 27th, 2008
Hillary Clinton didn’t land the solid punches she needed in last night’s final (?) debate with Barack Obama, which means the race might be over by this time next Wednesday.
Joe Sudbay over at Americablog has a concise and accurate SUMMATION of the debate — even down to the snarky comment about Chris Matthews.
POSTSCRIPT: Josh Marshall CORRECTLY PANS Tim Russert’s disgraceful performance.
UPDATE: Digby also TAKES A SHOT at Russert. And Nick Beaudrot DOES, TOO.
UPDATE II: There’s more on Russert’s weirdness HERE.
February 26th, 2008
Yesterday, we warned you against passing along CERTAIN DATA that might confuse or anger Lou Dobbs and other xenophobes.
Now we have THIS, which shows that crime rates among immigrants are lower than among native-born Americans.