…as long as we continue to turn a blind eye to butchery. Anyone who thinks that “settlements” cause this is disconnected with regional reality.
Category Archives: Media Criticism
Wrong About The King Hearings
An Open Letter To Davis Guggenheim
Don’t go back over to the Dark Side:
Guggenheim was right to make unions the villains of his film. But now that he’s starting to backpedal about collective bargaining, he’s getting heat from the reform community. There’s a bit of a mutiny on the “Waiting for ‘Superman’” Facebook page. The comments are decidedly opposed to Guggenheim’s view, with some supporters going so far as to say they’ll no longer promote the film.
Perhaps they’ll gravitate towards “Kids Aren’t Cars,” a film series that pulls no punches and shows the ugly impact collective bargaining has had on American public education.
It’s not too late to stop going wobbly.
Vanity Press
I see that Mark Whittington has found a new place to self-publish his ever-illogical ignorance.
Note that the commenters are unremittingly clueless as well.
[Sunday afternoon update]
Just in case anyone ever bothers to read Mark’s web site, he is now (as often, and hilariously stupidly) claiming that I have “leaped the length of my” (imaginary, just like the “Internet Rocketeers Club”) “chain,” once again demonstrating his complete inability to accurately discern human emotions. He also accused me of lying, with zero basis, since I never claimed that he wasn’t being paid. But then, as always, reading comprehension has never been been his strong suit, either.
Thoughts On The Smiley-Faced Fascists
The irony, of course, is that just a few days ago they were likening Scott Walker to Hitler. And Stalin. And they don’t even begin to see the irony of the second comparison in conjunction with the first.
[Update a while later]
“We might have resorted to cannibalism a bit early.”
“Unintended Consequences”?
Gotta love Bill O’Reilly. He opened his show tonight with the question: “What will be the unintended consequences of the Japanese earthquake for America and the rest of the world.”
My question for Bill, in the no-spin zone: what were the intended consequences of it? And who intended them?
The Climate Gravy Train
Programs To Cut
How about Head Start?
I know that discussing the elimination of a government program is heresy, and that all government programs once initiated become sacrosanct, and the only permissible discussion about them is the budget level, but I just find it amazing that, given our fiscal straits, we aren’t having a serious discussion about a) what should the federal government be doing, b) even if the goals of the program are constitutionally legit, is it doing them in the most cost-effective way possible? We should be talking about eliminating programs entirely, and not just arguing about how much money we should be wasting on them. Planned Parenthood and CPB/NPR are obvious examples, particularly given the results of recent stings, but even those run by people who are well intentioned, and not duplicitous, should on the block as well, if they’re not federal responsibilities, or if they are not effective. When our monthly deficit is larger than any of George Bush’s annual ones, it’s time to get serious.
By the way, this principle would apply to NASA as well. Certainly SLS/Orion are prime candidates for elimination, and the only thing keeping them alive is their constituencies for the pork.
[Update a few minutes later]
The Democrats’ dull budget scissors.
Traffic Jams
This had me scratching my head, though. It lists the top ten most congested highways (not sure how they measure that), and I found a couple of surprises.
First, that none of them were in southern California. I would have thought that the 405 through West LA and over Sepulveda Pass into the Valley would have been a prime candidate.
Second, that they list the merge between northbound US-23 and northbound I-75, in Detroit. Only one problem. Those two highways merge in Flint, sixty miles northwest of Detroit (and my home town). And while I haven’t spent much time there lately, I have been there some, and I’m quite surprised that it beats all of the Detroit freeways for congestion. The only time I can imagine it would be a big problem is on holiday weekends with people coming from the Detroit area heading up north. Even then, it can be avoided by taking I-475 through town. I’d like to know how it got so designated. It makes me question the validity of the rest of them as well.
The Bigotry
…of Keith Ellison. Not to mention his teary-faced lies.