We Didn’t Have to Lose Arlen Specter – Sen. Snowe

IT is disheartening and disconcerting, at the very least, that here we are today — almost exactly eight years after Senator Jim Jeffords left the Republican Party — witnessing the departure of my good friend and fellow moderate Republican, Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, for the Democratic Party. And the announcement of his switch was all the more painful because I believe it didn’t have to be this way.

When Senator Jeffords became an independent in 2001, I said it was a sad day for the Republicans, but it would be even sadder if we failed to confront and learn from the devaluation of diversity within the party that contributed to his defection. I also noted that we were far from the heady days of 1998, when Republicans were envisioning the possibility of a filibuster-proof 60-vote margin. (Recall that in the 2000 election, most pundits were shocked when Republicans lost five seats, resulting in a 50-50 Senate.)

Op-Ed Contributor – We Didn’t Have to Lose Arlen Specter – NYTimes.com

100 Days of Bashing Obama

Fair and balanced, indeed.

Christian the Lion Yet Again [UPDATED]

I have posted this video a few times, but the earlier posts contained videos that have been removed from YouTube.

Here’s one that’s still available:

UPDATE:
Here is a •Today Show interview with John and Ace•! Enjoy!

My Birthday [UPDATED]

Hello faithful readers!

Today was my 38th birthday. As it happens, I share this birthday with Jay Leno (who happens to be from my hometown, oddly enough!), former Secretary of State James A. Baker III (the loyal Bush family consigliere, Secretary of the Treasury and Chief of Staff to President Ronald Reagan), and Saddam Hussein (may he NOT rest in peace)!

I spent much of my life (until the age of 35 or so) wondering why I was so “unlucky.” My friends and family often called me “Eeyore.” At Thanksgiving Dinner one year, my father made me a faux-Indian headdress upon which he wrote “Grey Cloud.” All true, all fair.

Lately, however — knock wood — my entire attitude has changed. These days — knock wood — I wake up in wonderment of how lucky I am.

I have a job that a love, with terrific colleagues and great students.
I have a nephew and two nieces that I love more than anything in the world, and who have revitalized me.
I have a great family who has helped me achieve all that I have achieved.
I have a fantastic circle of friends, some old, some new: Donald, Jon (the frequent commentator at Zalandria “JonC”), Jamie, John (and their parents), Krissy, Stephanie and Tom, Jen and Tom (a different Tom), and many other great acquaintances (even some of you on the web! I leave no one out on purpose; please blame my faulty memory — I think constantly about the past, and the future; the present is often a mystery to me for whatever reason).
An article I wrote on the Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts will be published this fall in the Historical Journal of Massachusetts. (Please support this journal with your subscription and/or contribution!)

I have known both great triumph and great tragedies, great luck and bad luck, success and frustrations — thus, in the words of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, “I have had no end of a lesson, and it has done me no end of good.”

So today, in the words of Lou Gehrig, I feel like the luckiest man on Earth.

Knock wood.

I thank you all most sincerely for your continued readership of Zalandria. I can only hope that you’ve had a few laughs and been given pause for thought. Although we don’t know each other, it means a lot to me that my efforts in maintaining this blog since 2005 have reached a few people.

With best wishes for a wonderful and fulfilling 2009 and beyond,
Shawn.

🙂

Knock-wood!

Amerida [UPDATED]

This is another SNL parody that I remembered from the late 1980s. It is making fun of the ABC mini-series “Amerika,” which concerned a Soviet take-over of the US. That mini-series was a response to the 1983 mini-series “The Day After,” about a nuclear war.

Enjoy! (Oh, and it stars the late, great Phil Hartman!)

BONUS! Here’s the trailer for the original miniseries. God I love it! So patriotic! So 1980s!

The End of the World As We Know It? [UPDATED]

[See below for update on how Republicans screwed us … again!]

So the swine flue has hit several places. Every time I see headlines like this across the web, I am reminded of those disaster movies where, in the wake of some apocalypse, the camera always finds dire headlines splashed across yellowed newspapers trapped in rusty newspaper boxes. Will we think of these headlines in the wake of a massive flu epidemic? I doubt it. But here are the headlines anyway, ready-made for Hollywood.

CNN:

BBC:

UPDATE:

Turns out the Republicans stripped out $900 million in pandemic preparedness!

A brief excerpt from The Nation:

The Beat
GOP Know-Nothings Fought Pandemic Preparedness
posted by John Nichols on 04/26/2009 @ 12:50pm

When House Appropriations Committee chairman David Obey, the Wisconsin Democrat who has long championed investment in pandemic preparation, included roughly $900 million for that purpose in this year’s emergency stimulus bill, he was ridiculed by conservative operatives and congressional Republicans.

Obey and other advocates for the spending argued, correctly, that a pandemic hitting in the midst of an economic downturn could turn a recession into something far worse — with workers ordered to remain in their homes, workplaces shuttered to avoid the spread of disease, transportation systems grinding to a halt and demand for emergency services and public health interventions skyrocketing. Indeed, they suggested, pandemic preparation was essential to any responsible plan for renewing the U.S. economy.

Now, as the World Health Organization says a deadly swine flu outbreak that apparently began in Mexico but has spread to the United States has the potential to develop into a pandemic, Obey’s attempt to secure the money seems eerily prescient.

And the partisan attacks on his efforts seem not just creepy, but dangerous.

…

Rove dismissed Obey’s proposals as “disturbing” and “laden with new spending programs.” He said the congressman was peddling a plan based on “deeply flawed assumptions.”

Like what?

Rove specifically complained that Obey’s proposal included “$462 million for the Centers for Disease Control, and $900 million for pandemic flu preparations.”

This was wrong, the political operative charged, because the health care sector added jobs in 2008.

As bizarre as that criticism may sound — especially now — Rove’s argument was picked up by House and Senate Republicans, who made it an essential message in their attacks on the legislation. Even as Rove and his compatriots argued that a stimulus bill should include initiatives designed to shore-up and maintain any recovery, they consistently, and loudly, objected to spending money to address the potentially devastating economic impact of a major public health emergency.

The attack on pandemic preparation became so central to the GOP strategies that AP reported in February: “Republicans, meanwhile, plan to push for broader and deeper tax cuts, to trim major spending provisions that support Democrats’ longer-term policy goals, and to try to knock out what they consider questionable spending items, such as $870 million to combat the flu and $400 million to slow the spread of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases.”

The Banality of Bush White House Evil

On Tuesday, it will be five years since Americans first confronted the photographs from Abu Ghraib on “60 Minutes II.” Here, too, we want to cling to myths that quarantine the evil. If our country committed torture, surely it did so to prevent Armageddon, in a patriotic ticking-time-bomb scenario out of “24.” If anyone deserves blame, it was only those identified by President Bush as “a few American troops who dishonored our country and disregarded our values”: promiscuous, sinister-looking lowlifes like Lynddie England, Charles Graner and the other grunts who were held accountable while the top command got a pass.

Op-Ed Columnist – The Banality of Bush White House Evil – NYTimes.com

A Black Family Adopts a White Girl. White America Freaks.

Several pairs of eyes follow the girl as she pedals around the playground in an affluent suburb of Baltimore. But it isn’t the redheaded fourth grader who seems to have moms and dads of the jungle gym nervous on this recent Saturday morning. It’s the African-American man—six feet tall, bearded and wearing a gray hooded sweatshirt—watching the girl’s every move. Approaching from behind, he grabs the back of her bicycle seat as she wobbles to a stop. “Nice riding,” he says, as the fair-skinned girl turns to him, beaming. “Thanks, Daddy,” she replies. The onlookers are clearly flummoxed.

As a black father and adopted white daughter, Mark Riding and Katie O’Dea-Smith are a sight at best surprising, and at worst so perplexing that people feel compelled to respond. Like the time at a Pocono Mountains flea market when Riding scolded Katie, attracting so many sharp glares that he and his wife, Terri, 37, and also African-American, thought “we might be lynched.” And the time when well-intentioned shoppers followed Mark and Katie out of the mall to make sure she wasn’t being kidnapped. Or when would-be heroes come up to Katie in the cereal aisle and ask, “Are you OK?”—even though Terri is standing right there.

What Adopting a White Girl Taught One Black Family | Newsweek Culture | Newsweek.com

Tax Rates

Clinton Destroys Republican Congressman

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton humiliates idiotic Republican Pence:

The Pulitzer-winning investigation that dare not be uttered on TV

Glenn Greenwald
Tuesday April 21, 2009 08:27 EDT

The Pulitzer-winning investigation that dare not be uttered on TV

The New York Times’ David Barstow won a richly deserved Pulitzer Prize yesterday for two articles that, despite being featured as major news stories on the front page of The Paper of Record, were completely suppressed by virtually every network and cable news show, which to this day have never informed their viewers about what Barstow uncovered.

Here is how the Pulitzer Committee described Barstow’s exposés:

Awarded to David Barstow of The New York Times for his tenacious reporting that revealed how some retired generals, working as radio and television analysts, had been co-opted by the Pentagon to make its case for the war in Iraq, and how many of them also had undisclosed ties to companies that benefited from policies they defended.

The Pulitzer-winning investigation that dare not be uttered on TV – Glenn Greenwald – Salon.com

American Stonehenge: Monumental Instructions for the Post-Apocalypse

The strangest monument in America looms over a barren knoll in northeastern Georgia. Five massive slabs of polished granite rise out of the earth in a star pattern. The rocks are each 16 feet tall, with four of them weighing more than 20 tons apiece. Together they support a 25,000-pound capstone.

Approaching the edifice, it’s hard not to think immediately of England’s Stonehenge or possibly the ominous monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey. Built in 1980, these pale gray rocks are quietly awaiting the end of the world as we know it.

American Stonehenge: Monumental Instructions for the Post-Apocalypse

18 Funniest Mitch Hedberg Quotes

18. I want to hang a map of the world in my house then I’m gonna put pins into all the locations that I’ve traveled to. But first I’m gonna have to travel to the top two corners of the map so it won’t fall down.

17. If you go to the grocery store and stand in front of the lunch meat section for too long, you start to get pissed off at turkeys. You see turkey ham, turkey pastrami, turkey bologna — somebody needs to tell the turkeys, “Man, just be yourself.”

16. I’m against picketing, but I don’t know how to show it.

15. One time, this guy handed me a picture of him, he said,”Here’s a picture of me when I was younger.” Every picture of you is when you were younger. “Here’s a picture of me when I’m older.” “You son-of-a-bitch! How’d you pull that off? Lemme see that camera!”

14. Whenever I walk, people try to hand me out fliers, and when someone tries to hand me out a flier, it’s kinda like they’re saying, “Here, you throw this away.”

Read the rest here…
18 Funniest Mitch Hedberg quotes

Two Great Responses to the Teabagging Idiots

…and here’s one for the anti-gay marriage folks…

…and finally, a question: what color is this??

Suppressing the Vote of Minorities and the Elderly in Florida

Editorial
Suppressing the Vote in Florida
Published: April 18, 2009

Since 2000, Florida has been synonymous with badly run and undemocratic elections. This distinction has not come to it by chance. Many of the state’s election officials and legislators work hard to keep eligible voters from casting ballots. The Florida Legislature is at it again, threatening to pass new rules that would make it harder for eligible voters, especially those from minorities and those who are poor, to register and vote.

Republican state legislators, who are behind the latest bills, want to make it illegal for anyone to get within 100 feet of a line of voters. That provision would criminalize election protection programs, in which nonpartisan volunteers make themselves available outside of polling places on Election Day to ensure that eligible voters know their legal rights and are able to cast ballots.

The legislation would also impose onerous and unnecessary rules on voter registration drives, including a requirement that registration forms must be turned in within 48 hours. Grass-roots voter registration drives play an important role in getting poor and minority voters registered. If this legislation passes, however, many groups may stop registering voters rather than risk jail sentences or fines.

The elderly, a sizable voting bloc in Florida, would also be hard hit. They would no longer be able to use photo IDs issued by retirement centers or neighborhood associations at the polls. That would be a serious hardship for the many elderly people who do not have driver’s licenses.

Another provision would require election officials to purge voting rolls more frequently, a sore point in Florida, where an improper purge of the rolls before the 2000 election removed many eligible voters.

Republican leaders seem to be trying to push the legislation through quickly, with a minimum of public attention or comment. If they succeed, the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida is already threatening to challenge parts of it in court. It is doubtful that significant parts of it, like the prohibition on giving legal advice to voters in line, could survive a constitutional challenge.

Florida legislators should not need a court to tell them not to interfere with the right to vote.

Editorial – Suppressing the Vote in Florida – NYTimes.com