Geeky I know, but I love that the White House has aflickr account. It features the First 100 Days-Delivering on Change behind-the-scenes photos by Pete Souza, some of which were released earlier this week, also available now at whitehouse.gov. Available for download under Creative Commons license,too!
Good reporter. Have a cookie. At 7:28 in, Andre Showell from BET points out that, you know, some parts of America have been in a recession for half a damn century, while middle-class white people pretended they didn’t exist, so let’s have some economic recovery that actually helps them this time around:
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Linds, pet. The problem is that people don’t like Republicans anymore. The problem isn’t that you don’t have the right mix of pseudo-fascists and actual fascists who carry I AM A FASCIST cards and goose step to their beds at night. The problem isn’t that people disagree 30 percent of the time. The problem is that for 40 years you people have been stoking racism, misogyny, homophobia, xenophobia, anti-intellectualism and a general sense that if you drank this kind of cola and wore this kind of clothing you could come to the sleepover.
You were doing it in order to win elections, and I get that, but the problem is people believed it and now you have this following of rabid marmosets who chew off their own legs when you forget to distract them with something shiny on a string. The teabagging set believed your bullshit and they show up at the polls now, so you either have to give them up or you have to stop acting like it’s uncouth they like you. These are the choices you’ve given yourself.
In a way, it still seems like kind of a fluke, that America finally got fucked enough for this crap not to work anymore. I still shudder to think about Huckabee as the nominee because his folksy thing is just good enough that maybe the press would have fallen for him as the “regular guy,” I mean, he’s evil but he’s not an idiot. I shudder to think if McCain’s campaign had been smarter, because it still seems like we got away with something, having gotten most people to the point where they weren’t having it anymore.
But they aren’t having it anymore, and that’s what this whole story about rebranding and expanding the tent doesn’t get. Later in the story:
You lost young people because you suck. You lost young people not because of the branding or because you had too few pseudo-fascists but because young people figured out that you basically hated them and their biracial gay friends from France or whatever, with their iPhones, and they looked around at all your true-bue conservative leading lights, like fucking Box Turtle John and Huckaputz, and Jonah, and said, um, we’ll be down the hall where they’re not mocking poor people for being poor. That’s not a problem you can fix by coming up with a new slogan.
Though the portion of the economy that does branding studies and marketing campaigns thanks you for your stimulus.
Schmucks.
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Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-Homophobistan), on the House floor earlier today:
Posts in the van belong to their posters. Please check around your seat for belongings prior to exiting the van. In honor of BuggyQ joining the First Draft revolutionary collective, she gets the wheel until she crashes or gets sick of us, whichever comes first.
Update: Van closed. Thank you all for being surprising, troubling, humbling and enchanting guests!
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Up for a vantomorrow night? It’s been a while, we could haul it out, give it a good spring cleaning.
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First we see CNN’s David Mattingly being attacked from 2 camera angles by mean fish.
Then Fox News is shocked their producer was able to call and get a hostage on the phone in the midst of being held hostage (hmm maybe they picked up the phone thinking it was a hostage negotiator?)
Whatever…
Fox was so proud that their producer “was able to generate so much information” via her super duper producer power of “just reading into it” as well as being able to see through the phone as to what was “possibly” occurring.
(Length: 2:40)
Remember when the Chicago Tribune was gonna have one?
You can bet that if the entire magazine featured black artists without a single white person, the editors would have noticed.
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Some observers say Twitter — a micro-blogging site where users
post 140-character messages — has become a hotbed of unnecessary hype
and misinformation about the outbreak, which is thought to have claimed
more than 100 lives in Mexico.
“This is a good example of why
[Twitter is] headed in that wrong direction, because it’s just
propagating fear amongst people as opposed to seeking actual solutions
or key information,” said Brennon Slattery, a contributing writer for
PC World. “The swine flu thing came really at the crux of a media
revolution.”
I had my hands full killing journalism. Now you want me to kill, you know, pigs, and people? I’m one not very energetic girl, here. Gimme a break. Also:Embedded video fromCNN Video
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Richard Cohen, ladies and gentlemen:
So, wait, releasing the memos was supposed to stop all terrorism ever? DAMN, no wonder people are so upset about them, because that hasn’t worked at all!
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Why not? There’s no shortage of them at the Washington Post.
Hah hah hah … wait. What? This argument is stuffed so full of straw you might as well stand it up in a field to scare the crows away. Obama didn’t say releasing the memos would make us safer, he said torture didn’t make us safer. Does a girl with a web site really have to explain the difference to a Washington Post columnist? Also, I just have to jump in to juxstapose a few sentences here:
[snip]
If Obama thinks the world will respond to his new torture policy, he is
seriously misguided. Indeed, he has made things a bit easier for
terrorists who now know what willnot happen to them if they get caught.
Follow all that? The threat of torture may or may not work, so knowing all the horrible things that might happen to you or not happen to you at American hands if you do terrorism will make you more likely to do terrorism, becausethat’s not in any way the threat of torture.I don’t want to hear one more word about standards and rigorous edting of newspapers from anybody at the Washington Post.
SO GO DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT or shut the hell up. God. The world is not a vengeance buffet from which you can either choose an option or bitch that there’s nothing there you like. I’m sorry if the torture served up by Head Chef Bush didn’t tempt your appetite, Rich, but there’s plenty of places down the street for you to nosh.
I mean, really, you want vengeance? Teach some Afghan school children to read. Hell, teach some children around here to read. I don’t know what the hell it is with guys like this, who seem to be waiting for the proper avenue for their holy rage, but the world is not short of stuff you can do to piss the Taliban and Al Qaeda off, not the least of which would be to stop being such a wanker all the time.
This whole column is just so typically Cohen: “I’m against torture, but not like a pussy or anything about it, because I swore eternal vengeance the likes of which the world has not seen, said vengeance to be expressed mostly in writing about how hippies suck. Torture works, in fact the threat of torture works, but releasing memos that basically point out you’re fucked if Americans catch you terrorism-ing willl never work, because Obama hasn’t stopped all suicide bombings ever. So there.”
Schmuck.
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They always tell you that when writing, write what you know.Well, I know books.Not all of them (yet, more’s the pity) but I always have at least one going, often more (right now it’s about 5, 1 fiction, 4 non-fiction).So I thought it’d be fun to tell you what I’m reading right now, and find out what all of you are reading, since I’m always looking for the next good read.
My non-fiction read at present isFounding Faith:Providence, Politics, and the Birth of Religious Freedom in America, by Steven Waldman (ISBN-13:978-1400064373).I’m big into history (no surprise, it being what I teach), and I picked this one up to get myself back in the American history mode (till my U.S. History didn’t make this term…sigh…).
I’ve been working my way through this one since January, dipping in and out as the spirit moves me (luckily, its structure lends itself to reading in installments).Until now, I’d spent most of my Founding Fathers energies on Adams (only one letter off from Adama—coincidence?I think not…).But the FF I’m most intrigued by after reading this is Madison.
more after the jump
Good morning, everyone!
First of all, my thanks to the First Draftees who contributed to Ms. DeWitt’s Journalism class at Donorschoose – the hat I don’t wear is off to you!
Now – let’s get suited up and dip into the alleged minds of thehorrendus res publica, shall we?
Don’t forget – their inflammatory rhetoric is classified as propane language.
First tawdry tidbit in our hall of shame –Sarah cites Global Warming. Freepers light farts in protest!
For the Freepers, this must be like waking up the morning after their wedding night and finding the object of their affection standing over them with a knife and a determined look.
And all this time I thought you loved her for her mind…
There’s a few“she didn’t really mean it” types in Freeperville…
…but the majority of the responses are like this:
…rhymes with – “June”? Nope. “Spoon”? Nah. “Tune”? Uh-uh.
I’ve got it!!!
“Traitor”.
Well, what a wonderful way to start the day!
Lots more after the jump, soooooooo…
Good morning, First Drafters! I had quite a shock last night when I got an e-mail from the remarkable Athenae asking if I would be willing to take on the Tuesday guest post slot. I am, without a doubt, deeply honored to be asked. I’ll do my best to live up to the high standards that have been set around here, but Oyster left some big shoes to fill.
So here I am this morning, suddenly transformed from pseudonymous commenter to pseudonymous guest blogger, and, in the immortal words of Bert Lahr, “Shucks, folks, I’m speechless!”
We’ll see how long that lasts…
Until I find words, here’s a really cool link for those of you as fascinated by the swine flu as I am:
Isn’t it nice to actually get useful information from the government?
Back in October of 2006 I sent an email to Athenae which started with:“OK I have another idea…What do you think of the idea of trying to puttogether a First-Draft Krewe to go down to New Orleans for a weekend and gut a home?”
Athenae loved the idea and so did you. Some of you joined the Krewe and went to NOLA, while others of you donated money and supplies to make it all possible. And many more sent words of support. Here is thelink to Athenae’s post on the gutting of the home at 1773 Sere Street pictured below:
The home was in pretty bad shape and honestly I thought it would end up being razed.
I was so wrong.
Sinfonian, who was a member of the Krewe, was in NOLA today and visited 1773 Sere Street and what he saw is just amazing…
Sinfonian has a great post on the Rest of the Story. And you First-Drafters helped in getting it started.
Arlen Specterannounced he is switching to the Democratic Party. His statement alsoincluded this:
My change in party affiliation
does not mean that I will be a party-line voter any more for the
Democrats that I have been for the Republicans. Unlike Senator
Jeffords’ switch which changed party control, I will not be an
automatic 60th vote for cloture. For example, my position on Employees
Free Choice (Card Check) will not change.Whatever my party affiliation, I
will continue to be guided by President Kennedy’s statement that
sometimes Party asks too much. When it does, I will continue my
independent voting and follow my conscience on what I think is best for
Pennsylvania and America.
Is it me or is the idea of “grading” the president just something stupid the cable people cooked up to give themselves something to talk about so they wouldn’t have to talk about boring old policy and news and the law and stuff?
Does Obama deserve an A? A B? A C+? Who the hell cares? I’ll take my praise or criticism of the president the same way I take it of anything else: on an as-needed basis, when he does something nice or something tooly. Why do we need a designated grading period?
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