Five-term Senator Arlen Specter, who switched parties last year, was defeated in the Democratic primary in Pennsylvania last night. Representative Joe Sestak will now be the Democratic nominee in the upcoming Senate race, and Specter is out of a job.
"Sen. Arlen Specter's primary loss continues bad 2010 for President Obama, Democrats" says the New York Daily News.
"Specter Defeat Signals a Wave Against Incumbents" announces the New York Times.
"Activists seize control of politics" grimaces The Politico.
Et cetera.
Or, you know, Democrats just wanted someone who didn't switch to their party because he couldn't have beaten a primary challenge from the Right. For all his talk about principles, the only principle that ever mattered to Specter was winning—which is why the so-called "moderate" spent the entirety of the Bush administration as a complicit Republican and only developed a case of the oopsies when it was evident he still wasn't rightwing enough for the rightwingers in his home state.
Turns out he wasn't leftwing enough for the leftwingers in his home state, either. Guess that's what happens when you spend 30 years straddling a fence, instead of staking out firm territory on one side or the other (even when the fence moves way the hell to the right).
That Democratic primary voters opted to go for a reliable Democrat only looks like a harbinger of bad news for Democrats, or evidence of an anti-incumbent frenzy, or proof of "activism," to a media who can't see past their pre-written narratives about Democratic losers and Republican comebacks.
It would be laughable, if only this sort of irresponsible bullshit didn't so frequently write those narratives into reality.
Specter: Out
Question of the Day
To follow-up on yesterday's QotD: What's your least favorite word, based solely on its sound?
I can't think of anything off the top of my head that I don't like based solely on its sound, but I know a ton of people who hate the sound of moist.
Scene from Cannes
[Trigger warning for Polanski shit.]
French director Xavier Beauvois shows his support for renowned child rapist Roman Polanski with a great t-shirt that is definitely the appropriate tone to make a statement on behalf of a fugitive from justice in a 30-year-old rape case, as long as he's made great art or whatever. Nothing says considered and principled position like a t-shirt that looks like it was made by a t-shirt shop at the local mall in the 1980s.
I believe the garment is from the Bernard-Henri Lévy 2010 collection, Rape Apologia in Black and White—because rape never goes out of fashion and defending rapists is all the rage at Cannes this year.
[Via Gabe. Please note that although Gabe is decidedly not in the pro-Polanski camp, Videogum is not a safe space and I strongly recommend caution before clicking through on this one in particular, given the subject matter.]
Stay Classy, Teach
[Trigger warning for violent imagery.]
An Alabama geometry teacher has been placed on leave following a lesson on angles in which he used the assassination of President Obama as an example.
The teacher was apparently teaching his geometry students about parallel lines and angles, officials said. He used the example of where to stand and aim if shooting Obama.Yes, please carefully explain to this college educated gentleman why it's a no-no to make ha-has about killing the president to a roomful of impressionable kids.
"He was talking about angles and said, 'If you're in this building, you would need to take this angle to shoot the president'," said Joseph Brown, a senior in the geometry class.
Efforts to reach the teacher for comment Monday were unsuccessful. Superintendent Phil Hammonds said the teacher remains at work, and there are no plans for termination.
"We are going to have a long conversation with him about what's appropriate," Hammonds said. "It was extremely poor judgment on his part, and a poor choice of words."
Christ.
Seen
I had yet another doctor's appointment earlier today, so you know it's time for me to report what inspirational message is currently on display on my favorite local church sign:
Man's way is a hopeless end. God's way is an endless hope.Kudos for the clever reversal, Local Church Sign Messageers, but I'm still going to have to deduct 1,000 points for nonsensical balderdashery.
Unless, of course, you intended to imply that Christianity is a series of empty promises that never deliver.
In which case, good job with that "endless hope" business.
Oh, Getty Images
So, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton testified today at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, and there is a whole series of awesome pictures of her in her pink blazer looking all smart and awesome and shit.
And then there's this image:
WASHINGTON - MAY 18: Lipstick is left on the straw of a plastic cup of tea that U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton drank while testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee about the new START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) treaty on Capitol Hill May 18, 2010 in Washington, DC. President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitri Medvedev signed the new arms reduction treaty in April. The treaty, which says the two countries must cut back to no more than 800 total launchers and slash their weapons stores by 30 percent, must be approved by the Senate.Any word on what Dmitri Medvedev thought of Hillsy's lipstick?! DON'T LEAVE ME HANGING, GETTY IMAGES!
This has been your regularly scheduled reminder that Hillary Clinton is a Woman.
Quote of the Day
"We have learned something important since the days that I served in Vietnam."—Connecticut Attorney General and Democratic US Senate candidate Richard Blumenthal. He's right; we've learned lots of things since those days. Like the fact that he didn't actually serve in Vietnam.
Oops.
Shorter Minnesota Republicans
"We heart Arizona! And racism!"
Rep. Steve Drazkowski, R-Mazeppa, introduced legislation on Thursday modeled after Arizona's new controversial immigration law. The bill would create a Minnesota Illegal Immigration Enforcement Team and require immigrants to carry an "alien registration" card. The bill uses the same "reasonable suspicion" protocol that has generated criticism against Arizona's law. It even carried the same name: The Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act."We heart those things SO MUCH!"
[H/T to Shaker Vesta44.]
Today's Edition of "Conniving and Sinister"
See Deeky's archive of all previous Conniving & Sinister strips here.
[In which Liss reimagines the long-running comic "Frank & Ernest," about two old straight white guys "telling it like it is," as a fat feminist white woman (Liss) and a biracial queerbait (Deeky) telling it like it actually is from their perspectives. Hilarity ensues.]
It's Time for Another Edition of Shakesville MadLibs!
Congressman Mark Souder (R-Eprobate) has announced his resignation from Congress, effective Friday, citing his affair with a staffer.
Souder, who represented northeast Indiana, was a Family Values champion, who held strong convictions about abstinence and the sanctity of marriage.
Speaking of Racism…
So, there's this article in The Guardian, which is headlined: "A $95,000 question: why are whites five times richer than blacks in the US?"
Can you answer that in one word? I know I can.
The article itself spends more than 850 words answering the question in its title, detailing many of the current and historical institutional inequities that have resulted in this racial wealth gap. But none of those 850+ words is "racism."
Even though the systematic denial of equal opportunities based on race is the very definition of racism.
"[T]here are greater opportunities and less challenges for low and moderate income families if they're white in comparison to if they're African-American or Hispanic," [Tom Shapiro, one of the authors of the report by the Brandeis University's Institute on Assets and Social Policy] said.That's racism.
The report attributes part of the cause to the "powerful role of persistent discrimination in housing, credit and labour markets. African-Americans and Hispanics were at least twice as likely to receive high-cost home mortgages as whites with similar incomes," the report says.That's racism.
Although many black families have moved up to better-paying jobs, they begin with fewer assets, such as inheritance, on which to build wealth. They are also more likely to have gone into debt to pay for university loans.That's the legacy of racism.
"African-Americans, before the 1960s, first by law and then by custom, were not really allowed to own businesses. They had very little access to credit. There was a very low artificial ceiling on the wealth that could be accumulated. Hence there was very little, if anything, that could be passed along to help their children get to college, to help their children buy their first homes, or as an inheritance when they die," said Shapiro.
I'm not suggesting, of course, that there's something wrong with the article for exploring structural inequality—quite the contrary, it was unusually well done in that regard.
I do, however, question the reluctance (not unique to this article) to incorporate the word racism into discussions of structural inequality based on race. It would be like a medical paper talking about a cure for the uncontrolled growth of abnormal cells in the human body without ever using the word cancer. I don't believe it's possible to properly address racism if we're unwilling to even call it by name.
This is part and parcel of privileged people trying to turn accusations of bias into an equivalent offense to expressions of bias; that is, we are now meant to regard being accused of racism as just as horrible an experience as being targeted by racism. (Poppycock.) Thus is any use of "the R-word" axiomatically treated as radioactive—or, conversely, the claim is made that its overuse will render it meaningless. These are straw-arguments of people who desperately want to avoid honest, sophisticated, productive discussions of racial injustice, lest that injustice which privileges them be replaced with an equality that robs them of their unearned advantages.
Racism is a word and a concept from which we cannot shy away if we are genuinely interested in challenging its effects.
I've been bombarded with racist messaging since the day I was born, everywhere I've been in the world, and it would have to be some kind of extraordinary bit of magic if I, a human being designed to be an intellectual sponge and socialized in a culture steeped with marginalizing narratives, had absorbed none of the racism (and other bigotries) pervading my environment. Like everyone else, I've internalized those negative messages so profoundly that even those biases of which I am a target get turned in on myself. The question is not whether any of us have internalized racism; the question is whether we leave that internalized racism unexamined.
And part of that examination, surely, is a willingness to call it by name. Again and again. Until we can discuss racism when we see it by using the word matter-of-factly, instead of treating it like a badge of shame, or a word/concept so radioactive it shouldn't be used in a straightforward conversation of structural inequality, but held under glass to be used only in cases of three-alarm racism.
Social justice is not the time for whispered tones and circumspect politeness, lest we offend the privileged.
Racism is why are whites are five times richer than blacks in the US. Let us not be shy. Let us speak about racism with the boldness that materially and enduringly subverting its grim consequences will require.
Texting! With Liss and Deeky!
Liss: Important News: Dana Carvey is still unfunny.
Deeky: I liked him in Wayne's World. 25 years ago.
Liss: You heart Garth Algar.
Deeky: LOL! Is that really his last name?
Liss: I think so, lol.
Deeky: Christ. Only you would know that.
Liss: The lint trap strikes again: Garth Algar.
Deeky: LOLOLOLOLOL!!!
Questions
What the hell is Bobo talking about?
And why does the New York Times pay him egregious amounts of money to soil its pages with unsubstantiated assertions and imaginary correlations masking as facts dressed up in shitty prose, week after fucking week?
Are there really no other writers in this country, or any other, who could be hired to write something substantive, factual, and interesting?
Question of the Day
We've done this one before, but not for a very long time: What's your favorite word, based solely on its sound?
I have lots of words I really love, and I'm not sure I have a single favorite, but the first one that came to mind is tintinnabulation.
Two Notable SCOTUS Rulings
1. Federal officials can indefinitely hold inmates considered "sexually dangerous" after their prison terms are complete. This ruling applies only to federal inmates, and, like any extrajudicial detention policy, there is a huge potential for abuse.
But, unlike most other crimes, perpetrators of sexual assaults have a high recidivism rate and are more resistant to rehabilitation. Convictions for sexual assault frequently don't come with sentences that reflects that reality, with average prison terms being appallingly low. So, something's gotta give.
I'd personally prefer to see long mandatory sentences with multiple parole opportunities, with parole contingent on rigorous and comprehensive rehabilitation, some demonstrable evidence of success, and a required lifetime commitment to ongoing treatment, the failure to comply with which automatically triggers a reversal of parole.
Waiting until people re-offend is not working. For anyone.
2. Teenagers may not be locked up for life without chance of parole if they haven't killed anyone. This is good news, given that the majority of juveniles sentenced to life without parole are first-time offenders, who may never have had the opportunity to learn how to live a life without violence quite literally until they were incarcerated. (Which is only true of those fortunate enough to serve time in a relatively safe facility.)
And, naturally, juvenile offenders of color are disproportionately sentenced to life without parole, meaning this is a covert civil rights decision, too.
Jill notes, however, "I wish that the court had gone further and held that no juveniles can be sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. After all, this decision doesn't apply to people like Sara Kruzan, who was put in jail at 16 for killing her abusive pimp." Indeed so.
