See also, "Bill Clinton Undergoes a New Heart Procedure" (via Memeorandum).
Part 2 is here.
Earning a bachelor’s degree exerts an independent, statistically significant influence on a person’s views on five of the thirty-nine survey propositions, most involving a narrow range of polarizing social and cultural issues. If two people otherwise share the same background characteristics, as well as equal civic knowledge, the one who graduates from college will be more likely than the one who does not to:•Favor same same-sex marriage; andSimilarly, a college graduate will be less likely than a non-college graduate to:
•Favor abortion on demand.•Believe anyone can succeed in America with hard work and perseverance; •Favor teacher-led prayer in public schools; and
•Believe the Bible is the Word of God.
It turns out she's quite attractive, and some folks are taking issue with her recent cover photo on Sports Illustrated:
Over the last 60 years researchers have shown that about 4% of all SI covers have portrayed women.Check the post for updates. The author's walking it back a bit, although I'm sure Scott Eric Kaufman's on the case!
When females are featured on the cover of SI, they are more likely than not to be in sexualized poses and not in action–and the most recent Vonn cover is no exception.
The tea-party movement has no leader. But it does have a face: William Temple of Brunswick, Ga. For months, the amiable middle-aged activist has been criss-crossing America, appearing at tea-party events dressed in his trademark three-cornered hat and Revolutionary garb. When journalists interview him (which is often—his outfit draws them in like a magnet), he presents himself as a human bridge between the founders' era and our own. "We fought the British over a 3 percent tea tax. We might as well bring the British back," he told NPR during a recent protest outside the Capitol.That is truly a bizarre description, especially with that smack at Andrew Breitbart. That guy has single-handedly done more to right the ship of journalism than anyone else in recent years. If folks were chanting "USA, USA", then more power to 'em. I wish I could've been there!
It's a charming act, which makes the tea-party movement seem no more unnerving than the people who spend their weekends reenacting the Civil War. But the 18th-century getups mask something disturbing. After I spent the weekend at the Tea Party National Convention in Nashville, Tenn., it has become clear to me that the movement is dominated by people whose vision of the government is conspiratorial and dangerously detached from reality. It's more John Birch than John Adams.
Like all populists, tea partiers are suspicious of power and influence, and anyone who wields them. Their villain list includes the big banks; bailed-out corporations; James Cameron, whose Avatar is seen as a veiled denunciation of the U.S. military; Republican Party institutional figures they feel ignored by, such as chairman Michael Steele; colleges and universities (the more prestigious, the more evil); TheWashington Post; Anderson Cooper; and even FOX News pundits, such as Bill O'Reilly, who have heaped scorn on the tea-party movement's more militant oddballs.
One of the most bizarre moments of the recent tea-party convention came when blogger Andrew Breitbart delivered a particularly vicious fulmination against the mainstream media, prompting everyone to get up, turn toward the media section at the back of the conference room, and scream, "USA! USA! USA!" But the tea partiers' well-documented obsession with President Obama has hardly been diffused by their knack for finding new enemies.
It's not a trick, you lecherous fraud. You're a disgrace, not because I disagree with you politically, but because you're incapable of understanding that you're actively discouraging half of your students from ever being able to trust you because you want to post pictures of half-naked women on your blog.
I'm a teacher, one who's committed in a way you aren't, as is evidenced by the fact that you value your "freedom" to post pictures that play into the insecurities of half the student body over your responsibilities as a teacher. You've surveyed the field of available options, and chosen the abstraction that affords you titillation over the one that allows you to effectively reach more of your students.
You are, I repeat, a disgrace to the profession. You don't understand this, and I get that, but when you choose satisfying your libido in the company of strangers over fostering an environment in which all your students can safely invest in the rigors of your course, you have failed as a teacher. I'm not trying to get you fired. I'm not going to write anyone any letters, nor will I encourage anyone else to. But you deserve to be.
As Ben Eidelson notes, the Senate is by nature an undemocratic institution in that the representation is skewed toward small states, and sometimes a filibuster represents the votes of a majority of the US population. In fact, that happens most of the time – 64% – when Democrats are filibustering a Republican majority, and just 3% of the time when Republicans filibuster a Democratic majority. But this is not how we count votes in the US Senate, with each Senator getting the proportion of the vote of the population he or she represents. In a perfect world, a unicameral legislature would serve the nation well. But until that time, the 60-vote hurdle, now being trotted out for routine appointments, is too onerous for a democracy to function, particularly one with such unbalanced ideological rigidity from one party.The discussion is prompted by the administration's nomination of radical labor hack Craig Becker to the NLRB. But previously, with Klein and Yglesias, etc., the outrage was over partisan immobility on ObamaCare legislation. And we'll be having lots more debate on "gridlock" now that Scott Brown is the GOP's 41st vote.
Click on the image for the full size cover shot! Seriously.
See the International Planned Parenthood Federation's homepage.
It's been a while, but I wrote of Andrew Sullivan's anti-Semitism previously. See, "Andrew Sullivan: Anti-Semitic Neocon Derangement."
As good a case as I might make, it's nothing compared to Leon Wieseltier's utterly breathtaking decimation of Sully, "Something Much Darker" (via Memeorandum):
Consider some squibs that Sullivan recently posted on his blog. “Most American Jews, of course, retain a respect for learning, compassion for the other, and support for minorities (Jews, for example, are the ethnic group most sympathetic to gay rights),” he declared on January 13. “But the Goldfarb-Krauthammer wing–that celebrates and believes in government torture, endorses the pulverization of Gazans with glee, and wants to attack Iran–is something else. Something much darker.” Michael Goldfarb is the former online editor of The Weekly Standard, about whom the less said, the better. Charles Krauthammer is Charles Krauthammer. I was not aware that they comprise a “wing” of American Jewry, or that American Jewry has “wings.” What sets them apart from their more enlightened brethren is the unacceptability of their politics to Sullivan. That is his criterion for dividing the American Jewish community into good Jews and bad Jews–a practice with a sordid history.
As far as I can tell, Krauthammer’s position on torture is owed to a deep and sometimes frantic concern for American security, and his position on the war in Gaza to a deep and sometimes frantic concern for Israeli security, and his position on Iran to a deep and sometime frantic concern for American and Israeli security. Whatever the merits of his views, I do not see that his motives are despicable. Moreover, Krauthammer argues for his views; the premises of his analysis are coldly clear, and may be engaged analytically, and when necessary refuted. Unlike Sullivan, he does not present feelings as ideas. Most important, the grounds of Krauthammer’s opinions are no more to be found in, or reduced to, his Jewishness than the grounds of the contrary opinions–the contentions of dovish Jews who denounce torture, and oppose Israeli abuses in the Gaza war, and insist upon a diplomatic solution to the threat of an Iranian nuclear capability–are to be found in, or reduced to, their Jewishness. All these “wings” are fervent Jews and friends of Israel. There are many “Jewish” answers to these questions. We all want the Torah on our side. And the truth is that the Torah has almost nothing to do with it.
Sullivan is hunting for motives, not reasons; for conspiracies, which is the surest sign of a mind’s bankruptcy. These days the self-congratulatory motto above his blog is “Of No Party or Clique,” but in fact Sullivan belongs to the party of Mearsheimer and the clique of Walt (whom he cites frequently and deferentially), to the herd of fearless dissidents who proclaim in all seriousness, without in any way being haunted by the history of such an idea, that Jews control Washington. Sullivan might have a look at the domestic pressures–in lobbies and other forms–upon American diplomacy toward China, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Cuba, and give a thought or two to the elaborate and sometimes exasperating nature of foreign-policy-making in a democracy; but he prefers not to dive deep into the substance of anything. It is less immediately satisfying than cursing and linking. Does Sullivan think that Obama’s engagement with Iran–which, accurately described, is an engagement with the Iranian dictatorship and not with the Iranian people–is paying off? Does he believe that the Israeli war against Hamas was an unjust war, or that Israel should have continued to absorb Hamas’s rocket attacks–which were indisputably criminal–and not acted with force against them? His answers may be inferred from his various ejaculations–“the pulverization of Gazans,” for example, is a phrase that is calculatedly indifferent to the wrenching moral and strategic perplexities that are contained in the awful reality of asymmetrical warfare–but they are not so much answers as bar-room retorts; moody explosions of verbal violence; more invective from another American crank. Worst of all, the explanation that Sullivan adopts for almost everything that he does not like about America’s foreign policy, and America’s wars, and America’s role in the world–that it is all the result of the clandestine and cunningly organized power of a single and small ethnic group–has a provenance that should disgust all thinking people.
And this is not all that is disgusting about Sullivan’s approach. His assumption, in his outburst about “the Goldfarb-Krauthammer wing,” that every thought that a Jew thinks is a Jewish thought is an anti-Semitic assumption, and a rather classical one. Bigotry has always made representatives of individuals, and discerned the voice of the group in the voice of every one of its members. Is everything that every gay man says a gay statement? I will give an example. On October 15, 2001, when the ruins of the World Trade Center still smoldered, Sullivan published a piece in the Times of London called “A British View of the US Post-September 11.” In this piece he accused Bill Clinton of “appeasement,” and praised George W. Bush for assembling “the ideal team” for a “task” that “cannot be done by airpower alone,” and had kind words for America’s “world hegemony”–the politics changes, the fever remains the same–and also included this unforgettable sentence: “The decadent Left in its enclaves on the coasts is not dead – and may well mount what amounts to a fifth column.” A fifth column! It is a genuinely sinister sentence. I wish to emphasize two features of Sullivan’s comment. The first is that it is an exercise in demonization: it divides the American people into good Americans and bad Americans. The second is that it is in no way an expression of Sullivan’s homosexuality. It must never be said that when Sullivan lauded the bellicosity of Cheney and Rumsfeld–which wing of American Christianity, by the way, shall we blame for them? –he exchanged the company of the good gays for the company of the bad gays. To say that would be homophobic. Here is what such homophobia would look like: Most American homosexuals, of course, retain a respect for art, and compassion for the other, and support for minorities. But the Sullivan-Shmullivan wing of American homosexuality–that celebrates and believes in torture and war, and endorses the pulverization of Afghan villages with glee, and wants to attack any country where Al Qaeda may be found–is something else. Something much darker. Get it?
RTWT at the link.
Dan Riehl says the enormity is much more than anti-Semitism: "Sullivan is Actually Not An Anti-Semite." Brad DeLong, in a wide, winding path, comes to the same conclusion. And others on the left have circled the wagons.
But I'm with Wieseltier on this one. See also, Darleen Click, "Excitable Andy: ‘Watch out for the Jooooos!’."
Now, because I have more than two brain cells, served my country, got an education, and actually give a flying crap about the state of our nation, I consider it a better use of my time to study the vast injustices and crimes our government is committing against us on a daily basis than to watch something as inane and useless as fat men in pads slamming each other to the ground. Thus, I did not get a chance to see this commercial air live or I would have had a coronary on the spot.
Pretty good, except for the "inane and useless" part. The rest is here.
See also, ABC News, "Brooklyn Decker: Sports Illustrated Bikini Bombshell: North Carolina-Bred Model Brooklyn Decker Is New Swimsuit Issue Star."
Via Memeorandum. See also, JammieWearingFool, Theb Blog Prof, and POWIP.
And from Sunday's Los Angeles Times:
If any major candidate should be able to marshal that sentiment in California it is DeVore, a lifetime conservative rumbler whose policy positions dovetail perfectly with the mojo of the nation's guerrilla movement of the moment. Almost a third of Californians, according to a recent poll, identify with Tea Partiers like those at this gathering about 30 miles northeast of Sacramento; Republicans here and across the nation are salivating over the possibility of defeating their long-time Democratic nemesis, Boxer.
You are much more charitable than I, Donald. Murtha was corrupt ethically and despite his Vietnam service, proved himself to be a shill for the anti-war crowd at a time when American troops were in daily combat in Iraq. I make no distinction between Murtha and Harry Reid and his "the war is lost" comments. Murtha was no patriot. Sorry to say this but my feeling is "good riddance".
