Category Archives: Politics
Post-Racial Polling Place
It began this week with the NAACP accusing the tea party of harboring racists. The tea party, such as it is organized, excommunicated a California member for a post mocking the NAACP in a racial way. Seemingly in exchange, the NAACP got an agriculture department employee fired for racial comments posted on Breitbart. Except, when her remarks were considered in their full context, she was making a point against racism. Tea Party types say all the racism talk is an attempt to distract from the butt kicking Democrats are taking in the polls due to the Obama agenda. But that whould require a conspiracy – a cabal. Oh wait, it turns out there actually was a sort of media cabal- on a list serve called Journolist. And an ambition of one of its members, Spencer Ackerman, was to create a diversion to get the Jeremiah Wright story off the front page. The diversion? Random accusations of racism.
Here’s a quote from Ackerman’s email as posted by the Daily Caller: “If the right forces us all to either defend Wright or tear him down, no matter what we choose, we lose the game they’ve put upon us. Instead, take one of them — Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares — and call them racists.”
Here’s a great essay by Victor Davis Hanson about the racial mess we find ourselves in today.
And another good one from Slate’s William Saletan. He goes into the details to conclude that Andrew Breitbart lied about Shirley Sherrod and the NAACP.
Not Chris Matthew’s Leg Tingle
The Washington Post’s Ezra Klein ran a listserv limited to about 300 liberal media types called Journolist. Apparently the 300 included a whistle blower . The Daily Caller reported that Journolist archives include an NPR producer who would get a tingle out of Rush Limbaugh’s bug eyed death by heart attack – not surprising, an ignorant academic who thought that the FCC could shut down Fox News – also not surprising, and that real journalists discussed how to stop media coverage of Jeremiah Wright – way surprising.
Campaign Slogan Tryouts
Robert Gibbs said Republicans could win the House. Pelosi slammed Gibbs. Joe Biden claimed, “we’re going to win the House and the Senate”. Rep. Bill Pascrell (D., N.J.) felt compelled to announce “…an end to a growing rumor that the president doesn’t want the House, only the Senate, and feels he can get more done with a split Congress…” . Jonathan Weisman and Naftali Bendavid have the story in the WSJ.
Death and Taxes
Some guys have all the luck. Last year the estate tax was 45%. Next year it will be 55%. This year? Nil. Zero. The empty set. Businesses say this sort of thing makes it tough to plan for the future. One business isn’t complaining. Since he died in 2010, George Steinbrenner’s heirs won’t have to sell the Yankees to pay the taxes.
You Know The Drill
The Law-Enforcer-In-Chief responded to two court rulings overturning his deep water drilling ban by ordering a new deep water drilling ban.
