Wednesday, February 08, 2006
That's a Nice Looking Glass You've Got There, Alice
Good morning Mr. and Mrs. America and all the ships at sea . . . here now the news, where practically nothing is what it seems to be.
--Little Georgie Deutsch has resigned from his public affairs post at NASA, after it was revealed that he never actually graduated from Texas A&M. You'd think his government background check might have included confirming the major points of his resume. Then again, if your politics are correct, the rest of it is just details, right? Deutsch's resignation isn't going to fix the problem of the administration politicizing science and making stuff up out of whole cloth and Bible verses, but it's nice to see at least one sanctimonious Republican twit get his comeuppance.
--The cartoon controversy is continuing. Editors at the New York Press, an alt-weekly, quit their jobs late yesterday when the paper's management changed its mind at the last minute and refused to print the cartoons, after the paper had vigorously criticized other print outlets for refusing to print them. A blogger named Boozhy wrote about the resignations overnight, and received an interesting comment from a reader. (Scroll down to the first comment after the post.) The reader says publication of the cartoons, which first occurred last September in Denmark and only recently in other European countries, is part of a plot by the shadowy Bilderberg Group, which is supposed to be running the world in many shadowy ways, and which has close ties to the Danish newspaper that started the whole thing. By inflaming the Muslim world, he says, the West will have an easier time justifying the annihilation of it in the name of security. I don't think I buy it, but with the bar for stone-crazy-but-plausible as low as it is right now, I can't discount it, either.
--I thought that the bill I wrote about Monday, mandating that Wisconsin kids up to age eight be belted into child safety seats in cars, was still in commmittee. (According to the State Assembly's database, it was.) But the governor signed it into law yesterday. The bill was proposed and passed in response to federal initiatives, and the state can now get a chunk of federal highway money it would otherwise have lost. There's nothing wrong with the bill, really. What makes it seem absurd, as I noted Monday, is another bill before the Legislature that would lower the hunting age to eight. Remember, guns don't kill people--cars do.
Recommended Reading: Martin Luther King's legacy has been sanded off quite a bit since the political backlash against all things '60s began in the Nixon years. For a lot of Americans, especially conservatives, he's now a cartoon symbol of a bland and non-threatening "equality." Banished from historical memory is the radical nature of his politics, on subjects ranging from economic justice to war and peace. The real, radical King, and not the safe symbol, was invoked again and again at Coretta Scott King's funeral, which is why conservative commentators are losing their minds about the terrible and unseemly spectacle liberals made of themselves yesterday. Steve Gilliard at the News Blog, who is African American, goes off on the idiocy and hypocrisy in fine style here.
Good morning Mr. and Mrs. America and all the ships at sea . . . here now the news, where practically nothing is what it seems to be.
--Little Georgie Deutsch has resigned from his public affairs post at NASA, after it was revealed that he never actually graduated from Texas A&M. You'd think his government background check might have included confirming the major points of his resume. Then again, if your politics are correct, the rest of it is just details, right? Deutsch's resignation isn't going to fix the problem of the administration politicizing science and making stuff up out of whole cloth and Bible verses, but it's nice to see at least one sanctimonious Republican twit get his comeuppance.
--The cartoon controversy is continuing. Editors at the New York Press, an alt-weekly, quit their jobs late yesterday when the paper's management changed its mind at the last minute and refused to print the cartoons, after the paper had vigorously criticized other print outlets for refusing to print them. A blogger named Boozhy wrote about the resignations overnight, and received an interesting comment from a reader. (Scroll down to the first comment after the post.) The reader says publication of the cartoons, which first occurred last September in Denmark and only recently in other European countries, is part of a plot by the shadowy Bilderberg Group, which is supposed to be running the world in many shadowy ways, and which has close ties to the Danish newspaper that started the whole thing. By inflaming the Muslim world, he says, the West will have an easier time justifying the annihilation of it in the name of security. I don't think I buy it, but with the bar for stone-crazy-but-plausible as low as it is right now, I can't discount it, either.
--I thought that the bill I wrote about Monday, mandating that Wisconsin kids up to age eight be belted into child safety seats in cars, was still in commmittee. (According to the State Assembly's database, it was.) But the governor signed it into law yesterday. The bill was proposed and passed in response to federal initiatives, and the state can now get a chunk of federal highway money it would otherwise have lost. There's nothing wrong with the bill, really. What makes it seem absurd, as I noted Monday, is another bill before the Legislature that would lower the hunting age to eight. Remember, guns don't kill people--cars do.
Recommended Reading: Martin Luther King's legacy has been sanded off quite a bit since the political backlash against all things '60s began in the Nixon years. For a lot of Americans, especially conservatives, he's now a cartoon symbol of a bland and non-threatening "equality." Banished from historical memory is the radical nature of his politics, on subjects ranging from economic justice to war and peace. The real, radical King, and not the safe symbol, was invoked again and again at Coretta Scott King's funeral, which is why conservative commentators are losing their minds about the terrible and unseemly spectacle liberals made of themselves yesterday. Steve Gilliard at the News Blog, who is African American, goes off on the idiocy and hypocrisy in fine style here.
