North American links
Outrage over a suspended sentence for a mother who strangled her daughter.
About different patterns of family formation:
To define the divide in a sentence: In red America, families form adults; in blue America, adults form families.
Noting how Asians have become “white”:
“White” has stopped meaning Caucasian, imprecise as this term has always been, and has started to mean “those racial groups that have made it.” “Minority” has started to mean “those racial groups that have not yet made it.”
A black mayor of a mostly black city presides over falling murder rates and rising school test scores. A sinch for re-election? Not when the politics of resentment come into play.
US law now greatly restricts the ability to collect foreign libel rulings against US publication.
Looking at the corporate libertarians, the billionaire Koch brothers.
Noting the increasing lack of business experience in Administration and Congress. Contrasting the professional left with the amateur right. Looking at the rise of political insurgencies: from netroots to Tea Party. Examining the Tea Party as network politics.
Being very unimpressed with “cash for clunkers”:
When all is said and done, Cash for Clunkers was a deplorable exercise in budgetary wastefulness, asset destruction, environmental irrelevance, and economic idiocy. Other than that, it was a screaming success.
Mapping domestic and foreign migration patterns in US cities. The percentage of the US population which is foreign-born has fallen slightly for the first time in many years.
A long-serving Congressman apparently doesn’t quite get that the law applies to him too.
McDonalds shows up an unintended consequence of Obamacare.
An anonymous essay by a Chicago cop on the rampant crime and corruption in the city. More.
President Carter and President Clinton’s pollsters claim that President Obama is a highly divisive President in his politics. His Press Secretary has unloaded on the “professional Left” who are never satisfied. A comment which seems to have annoyed a lot of folk.
A Democrat Senator suggests it is time American policy moved on from affirmative action. More.
Critiquing Schwarzenegger’s vision of Republicanism.
Arguing that the Obama Administration is in a war against suburbia:
Ultimately, the war against suburbia reflects a radical new vision of American life which, in the name of community and green values, would reverse the democratizing of the landscape that has characterized much of the past 50 years. It would replace a political economy based on individual aspiration and association in small communities, with a more highly organized, bureaucratic, and hierarchical form of social organization.
Noting that surges in the size of the US federal government have generated major voter backlashes.
The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency union has passed a no confidence motion in the Agency’s leadership:
The National Council members criticized the ICE leadership and claim they created "misguided and reckless initiatives,” and claim ICE managers “abandoned the Agency’s core mission of enforcing United States immigration laws and providing for public safety, and have instead directed their attention to campaigning for policies and programs related to amnesty.”
The letter covered in more detail. The Director responds.
About the urge to find Tea Partiers racist:
Yet Blow’s op-ed amounts to the complaint that it is not happening. He wants Tea Partiers to be more forthrightly racist and therefore less hypocritical, or else shut up and be content to be politically voiceless. If any political stance today is troubling, it is this one.
Supreme Court Nominee Kagan is the third least popular Supreme Court nominee since Robert Bork (the most unpopular, followed by Harriet Miers). The most popular have been Chief Justice John Roberts, Clarence Thomas and Sonya Sotomayor. If one goes for net support-vote for less vote against-then the three with the most net support were Ruth Bader Ginsurg, John Roberts and Clarence Thomas and Kagan is still the third least net supported after Miers and Bork. Kagan also has the third highest undecideds after Miers and Bork. She just does not excite folk.
About the growth of European-style class resentments in the US.
… the growth in America of precisely the sort of political alignment which we have known for many years in Britain: an electoral alliance of the educated, self-consciously (or self-deceivingly, depending on your point of view) "enlightened" class with the poor and deprived.
Liberal politics is now - over there as much as here - a form of social snobbery. To express concern about mass immigration, or reservations about the Obama healthcare plan, is unacceptable in bien-pensant circles because this is simply not the way educated people are supposed to think. It follows that those who do think (and talk) this way are small-minded bigots, rednecks, oiks, or whatever your local code word is for "not the right sort".
Polling finds Republicans are doing very well among independent voters on economic and national security issues, still trailing badly on social issues. Polling suggests Speaker Pelosi is not likely to keep her job come November. Pointing out that the Democrats are at some risk of losing their Senate majority. Noting that Democratic voting is more concentrated than Republican.
About different patterns of family formation:
To define the divide in a sentence: In red America, families form adults; in blue America, adults form families.
Noting how Asians have become “white”:
“White” has stopped meaning Caucasian, imprecise as this term has always been, and has started to mean “those racial groups that have made it.” “Minority” has started to mean “those racial groups that have not yet made it.”
A black mayor of a mostly black city presides over falling murder rates and rising school test scores. A sinch for re-election? Not when the politics of resentment come into play.
US law now greatly restricts the ability to collect foreign libel rulings against US publication.
Looking at the corporate libertarians, the billionaire Koch brothers.
Noting the increasing lack of business experience in Administration and Congress. Contrasting the professional left with the amateur right. Looking at the rise of political insurgencies: from netroots to Tea Party. Examining the Tea Party as network politics.
Being very unimpressed with “cash for clunkers”:
When all is said and done, Cash for Clunkers was a deplorable exercise in budgetary wastefulness, asset destruction, environmental irrelevance, and economic idiocy. Other than that, it was a screaming success.
Mapping domestic and foreign migration patterns in US cities. The percentage of the US population which is foreign-born has fallen slightly for the first time in many years.
A long-serving Congressman apparently doesn’t quite get that the law applies to him too.
McDonalds shows up an unintended consequence of Obamacare.
An anonymous essay by a Chicago cop on the rampant crime and corruption in the city. More.
President Carter and President Clinton’s pollsters claim that President Obama is a highly divisive President in his politics. His Press Secretary has unloaded on the “professional Left” who are never satisfied. A comment which seems to have annoyed a lot of folk.
A Democrat Senator suggests it is time American policy moved on from affirmative action. More.
Critiquing Schwarzenegger’s vision of Republicanism.
Arguing that the Obama Administration is in a war against suburbia:
Ultimately, the war against suburbia reflects a radical new vision of American life which, in the name of community and green values, would reverse the democratizing of the landscape that has characterized much of the past 50 years. It would replace a political economy based on individual aspiration and association in small communities, with a more highly organized, bureaucratic, and hierarchical form of social organization.
Noting that surges in the size of the US federal government have generated major voter backlashes.
The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency union has passed a no confidence motion in the Agency’s leadership:
The National Council members criticized the ICE leadership and claim they created "misguided and reckless initiatives,” and claim ICE managers “abandoned the Agency’s core mission of enforcing United States immigration laws and providing for public safety, and have instead directed their attention to campaigning for policies and programs related to amnesty.”
The letter covered in more detail. The Director responds.
About the urge to find Tea Partiers racist:
Yet Blow’s op-ed amounts to the complaint that it is not happening. He wants Tea Partiers to be more forthrightly racist and therefore less hypocritical, or else shut up and be content to be politically voiceless. If any political stance today is troubling, it is this one.
Supreme Court Nominee Kagan is the third least popular Supreme Court nominee since Robert Bork (the most unpopular, followed by Harriet Miers). The most popular have been Chief Justice John Roberts, Clarence Thomas and Sonya Sotomayor. If one goes for net support-vote for less vote against-then the three with the most net support were Ruth Bader Ginsurg, John Roberts and Clarence Thomas and Kagan is still the third least net supported after Miers and Bork. Kagan also has the third highest undecideds after Miers and Bork. She just does not excite folk.
About the growth of European-style class resentments in the US.
… the growth in America of precisely the sort of political alignment which we have known for many years in Britain: an electoral alliance of the educated, self-consciously (or self-deceivingly, depending on your point of view) "enlightened" class with the poor and deprived.
Liberal politics is now - over there as much as here - a form of social snobbery. To express concern about mass immigration, or reservations about the Obama healthcare plan, is unacceptable in bien-pensant circles because this is simply not the way educated people are supposed to think. It follows that those who do think (and talk) this way are small-minded bigots, rednecks, oiks, or whatever your local code word is for "not the right sort".
Polling finds Republicans are doing very well among independent voters on economic and national security issues, still trailing badly on social issues. Polling suggests Speaker Pelosi is not likely to keep her job come November. Pointing out that the Democrats are at some risk of losing their Senate majority. Noting that Democratic voting is more concentrated than Republican.