February 2011
40 posts
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The US House of Representatives goes to work
Just a few of the bills proposed by the GOP-controlled House so far in 2011:
H.R.2. The Some People Don’t Need Healthcare Act: Repeals HCR, or the Health Insurance Reform law, with no plan for replacement.
H.R.3. The Rapist Protection Act: Redefines what constitutes rape in order to force women to carry more babies to term. The first bill (I am aware of) that refers to women simply as...
January 2011
51 posts
“men think highly of those who rise rapidly in the world, whereas nothing rises...”
– augustus hare, c. 1870 (via onlyondemairt)
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“David’s death is a result of the hatred planted in Uganda by U.S. evangelicals...”
– Val Kalende, chairwoman of one of Uganda’s gay rights groups, on the death of David Kato
David Kato, in 2010
Here in the US, calling opponents “evil” has become a common part of using extreme rhetoric to gain attention, a way to push the Overton window further to the right. It’s...
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“There’s another infamous shooting of a nine-year-old girl that is making...”
– David Neiwert, reporting on the murder of Brisenia Flores and her father, by an extreme right-wing offshoot of the Minutemen.
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“…when somebody gives a kidney, we applaud that person as the most...”
– Frances Kissling
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Unconstitutional? Congress passed mandatory health... →
If anyone’s really interested in the Founders’ intent…
How did the alligator lose its feathers? →
“There’s an even more astonishing possibility. The closest living relatives of birds, dinosaurs, and pterosaurs are crocodilians. Although these scaly beasts obviously do not have feathers today, the discovery of the same gene in alligators that is involved in building feathers in birds suggests that perhaps their ancestors did, 250 million years ago, before the lineages diverged. So...
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“…it is a very natural thing that weak and vicious minds should be inflamed...”
– Theodore Roosevelt, upon being shot
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Timesaving Tips from Gwyneth and Friends →
So, is this a parody? Or are these actually real quotes from real people?
Some of these are definitely going on the Shallow Sage.
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It's not about Sarah Palin, it's about our mental... →
I do think political discourse played a part in the shooting (and that both sides categorically do not engage in the same levels of violent speech), but Katherine Stone is absolutely right about the dire state of our country’s mental health system.
—JRon
Architecture in the Great Recession: A Return to... →
“…The last boom coincided with a loosening—some would say abandonment—of architectural propriety. Building booms often encourage excess—think of the Gilded Age—but this time large budgets, a celebrity architectural culture, and computer-aided design combined to produce a spate of distinctly odd buildings, such as Santiago Calatrava’s twisting apartment tower in Malmö, Sweden, and...
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[Right-wingers] Criticize Free T-Shirts At Tucson... →
Turns out they were printed up by the University. Wingers are probably just upset about “together we thrive” being printed on them. If they’d said “separate and angry all the time we thrive” that would’ve been cool.
ryking:
Wow. Faster than I expected.
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Insurrectionism Timeline →
I’d be interested to know if someone could find ONE instance of leftwing violence in the past few years that approaches this long list from the last two. And no, Obama quoting the Untouchables doesn’t get there.
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Violent Rhetoric
It seems it would be appropriate to take a look at the effects of violent political rhetoric and propaganda in other countries as well. There is a different set of historical baggage in each case, but we as Americans are not so unique for that to be irrelevant.
There are many many cases of political violence in other gun-filled countries that also follow demonization of public figures.
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Snippets of Revelation
Anderson Cooper: I'm reading biographies of Lincoln and Jefferson and Lincoln had horrible things said about him when he was president, really vicious, vicious stuff.
Bill Maher: Sure, and look what happened to him.
Cooper: well...
Maher: yeah, and we saw how that ended.
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“Most all of us are grownups and can handle extreme argument, but clearly some...”
– Matt Taibbi
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Sheriff Dupnik's criticism
The point of Sheriff Dupnik’s criticism, as I understood it, was that hatred and vitriol expressed by prominent people has a danger of inciting mentally ill people to violence. Whether it’s Loughner; Shelly Shannon and Scott Roeder; Michael Griffin; Eric Rudolph; Richard Poplawski; Gordon Kahl; Joseph Stack; Tharin Gartrell, Nathan Johnson and Shawn Adolf; Charles Polk; Willie & Cecilia...
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