Wednesday, November 24, 2010
Monday, November 22, 2010
The Weekly Pre-Turkey Day Wrangle
You DO know why they call it Turkey Day, right? Because the Cowboys and Longhorns both play then. *badaboom* Meanwhile, the Texas Progressive Alliance is distracted by thoughts of pie but still is able to bring you this week's blog roundup.
Off the Kuff examined the effect of straight ticket voting on the city of Houston's ballot propositions as well as the touching of our junk.
CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme wonders how the Cameron County Judge's race can get any weirder. Who won and how did things get so messed up?
This week on Left of College Station, Teddy takes a look at the bills concerning immigration that have been pre-filled in the Texas House of Representatives and the Texas Senate. LoCS also once again covered the week in headlines.
WhosPlayin posted a two-part series following air quality complaints in a neighborhood in North Texas near Barnett Shale gas wells and facilities.
Bay Area Houston wonders if Harris County Commissioner Jerry Eversole reported his free money to the IRS as income.
At TexasKaos, liberaltexan looks at what the prefiled bills tell us about the Texas Legislature's will regarding the trumped-up issue of illegal immigration. Check it out: Texas Legislative Watch: Pre-Filed Immigration Bills (Part I).
Snapshots from the Conservative Freak Show: Bristol Palin and voter fraud, Louie Gohmert and the SFA instructor he got fired, and John Ensign's million-dollar earmark.
A new contributor to Texas Liberal, a woolly mammoth named Extinct, noted that Just Kids by Patti Smith was the winner of the National Book Award for 2010. Just Kids is an account of Ms. Smith's youthful relationship with the photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. As a woolly mammoth, Extinct has a long experience with both life and loss.
Off the Kuff examined the effect of straight ticket voting on the city of Houston's ballot propositions as well as the touching of our junk.
CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme wonders how the Cameron County Judge's race can get any weirder. Who won and how did things get so messed up?
This week on Left of College Station, Teddy takes a look at the bills concerning immigration that have been pre-filled in the Texas House of Representatives and the Texas Senate. LoCS also once again covered the week in headlines.
WhosPlayin posted a two-part series following air quality complaints in a neighborhood in North Texas near Barnett Shale gas wells and facilities.
Bay Area Houston wonders if Harris County Commissioner Jerry Eversole reported his free money to the IRS as income.
At TexasKaos, liberaltexan looks at what the prefiled bills tell us about the Texas Legislature's will regarding the trumped-up issue of illegal immigration. Check it out: Texas Legislative Watch: Pre-Filed Immigration Bills (Part I).
Snapshots from the Conservative Freak Show: Bristol Palin and voter fraud, Louie Gohmert and the SFA instructor he got fired, and John Ensign's million-dollar earmark.
A new contributor to Texas Liberal, a woolly mammoth named Extinct, noted that Just Kids by Patti Smith was the winner of the National Book Award for 2010. Just Kids is an account of Ms. Smith's youthful relationship with the photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. As a woolly mammoth, Extinct has a long experience with both life and loss.
Thursday, November 18, 2010
Nothing to add
Well, not too much, anyway.
To conservatives -- both TeaBagger and moderate -- to low-information voters, even to the mostly disinterested 50% of Americans who don't vote, it's OK to be wrong as long as you're strong. I heard the ridiculous argument about George W. Bush when he was president: "you may not agree with him, but at least you know where he stands." You could always count on Bush to be stubbornly strong on the wrong side of any issue, nearly every single day of his eight years. Even the media fell in line, repeatedly referring to his actions in taking the nation into a war on false pretenses "bold".
When have you ever heard of any of Obama's initiatives referred to as "bold"?
Americans generally speaking aren't sympathetic to people who appear weak.
This is what happened with Jimmy Carter. He brought Egypt and Israel together and made peace, and for that was branded a wuss. He suffered from the bad luck of that helicopter crash in the desert as the commandos were on their way into Iran to free the hostages, and did not follow up with another strike.
And his only hope in 1980 eventually became that the Republican presidential candidate was too extremist. And America felt that way until the debate where Reagan seemed like a nice enough guy, not too crazy at all, and people rejected Carter in the election.
I'm sure Obama will also be one of our best ex-presidents.
If you do not fight, if you cannot find anything worth fighting for, the American people will reject you.
The next few weeks will tell. If Obama refuses to fight, it will be bad in 2012. And it should be.
It may be a petty, minor thing, but this is getting to the point where Obama is looking weak in many, many separate situations, and it's becoming a car wreck for the White House. Having him doing public post-election soul searching; having him give repeated noises in the press about preemptively caving on whatever it is the GOP might be asking for: it's a messaging/political disaster. He took a stout midterm loss and turned it into his own midterm disaster.
At some point someone in this White House has to start figuring out that, screw actual policy, they're getting their asses kicked purely on the PR front, and Obama's not going to get reelected if he looks like a quivering pushover. We know from the healthcare fiasco that there's a bunch of folks in this White House who care more about protecting Obama's image than actually getting useful stuff done: well, image-hoarders, now might be the perfect time to pay attention to what the nice news channels are telling you.
Instead, this is rapidly becoming another perfect example of being so miserly with your "limited" political capital that you end up losing all of it. Obama is keeping his powder so dry that he's losing battles without firing a shot.
To conservatives -- both TeaBagger and moderate -- to low-information voters, even to the mostly disinterested 50% of Americans who don't vote, it's OK to be wrong as long as you're strong. I heard the ridiculous argument about George W. Bush when he was president: "you may not agree with him, but at least you know where he stands." You could always count on Bush to be stubbornly strong on the wrong side of any issue, nearly every single day of his eight years. Even the media fell in line, repeatedly referring to his actions in taking the nation into a war on false pretenses "bold".
When have you ever heard of any of Obama's initiatives referred to as "bold"?
Americans generally speaking aren't sympathetic to people who appear weak.
This is what happened with Jimmy Carter. He brought Egypt and Israel together and made peace, and for that was branded a wuss. He suffered from the bad luck of that helicopter crash in the desert as the commandos were on their way into Iran to free the hostages, and did not follow up with another strike.
And his only hope in 1980 eventually became that the Republican presidential candidate was too extremist. And America felt that way until the debate where Reagan seemed like a nice enough guy, not too crazy at all, and people rejected Carter in the election.
I'm sure Obama will also be one of our best ex-presidents.
If you do not fight, if you cannot find anything worth fighting for, the American people will reject you.
The next few weeks will tell. If Obama refuses to fight, it will be bad in 2012. And it should be.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)