POWIP Piece of Work In Progress

Kill Barney Frank

's bill.

Dan Collins

Dan Collins is a dude who blogs. He used to blog elsewhere. Now he blogs here.

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O-RATOR OF OSLO

I may have gone too far, but I could have gone farther.

My sources deep inside the White House have given me an exclusive copy of the first draft of Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize speech he delivered in Oslo, Norway this morning.  Enjoy, America!

Transcript

Your Majesties, Your Royal Highnesses, Desperate and Gullible members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, stupid Americans and citizens of the world who have seamlessly fallen under my spell:

I receive this honor with little gratitude,  feigned humility and while wearing your mom’s jeans.  It is an award that used to speak to our highest aspirations, but hasn’t meant sh** since you started giving it to terrorists and incompetent peanut farmers.  The actions of world leaders have become meaningless, since I can now bend history in whichever direction I please.  Where my NBC White House correspondents at?

the rest

Kill Truck

KillTruck is a wife, mother, blogger and native midwesterner now living in Eastern Washington state. She writes about politics, pop culture, parenting, wifing and a few other subjects she has no authority to write about. She has macabre fascinations with prostitution and/or cannibalism. In her free time she enjoys eating and/or drinking her feelings, liveblogging Lifetime movies, thinking about Scott Brown and mocking things she doesn’t understand.

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Where’s Holder?

I read something like this, and I think, it's a good thing this guy's not a righty blogger:

Those other athletes had one of the world's most supportive casts. They had an overwhelming number of folks in the African-American community standing firmly and loudly behind them -- no matter what. They had Jesse and Al waiting to pounce in the background, if they hadn't done so already. They had black ministers across the country asking for special prayers in their name. They had folks in barbershops throughout African-American communities talking about conspiracies.

Mostly, despite everything those in black America had seen or heard about the events surrounding O.J., Vick, Iverson and the rest, they had unconditional love.

For Woods, not so much.

Actually, not at all, and Woods has nobody to blame but Woods.

It goes back to April 1997 when he famously took a nine-iron to the face of blacks by telling Oprah Winfrey on her couch that he wasn't black. He said he wasn't white, either. He said, given that his father is black and that his mother is Asian, he spent his youth inventing a word for himself called "Cablinasian."

Just like that, in the hearts of many African-Americans, Woods was on his own.

So, the lesson here is pick a gang and stick with it. You need protection, Oreo.

Dan Collins

Dan Collins is a dude who blogs. He used to blog elsewhere. Now he blogs here.

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Mandelbrotsquisite

From Wired via @Scarlett156

Dan Collins

Dan Collins is a dude who blogs. He used to blog elsewhere. Now he blogs here.

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Big News

Mediaite scored an interview with Andrew Breitbart where he announced that he was going to open some new Big sites to go with Big Hollywood and Big Government.

Andrew's sure to know that this is going to bring down an avalanche of satirical suggestions, so I suggest that we get out in front of the curve, you Big Pussies, and have some Big Fun.

Dan Collins

Dan Collins is a dude who blogs. He used to blog elsewhere. Now he blogs here.

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The Recent Unpleasantness (and happyfeet)

TimB recently visited comments to once again chide me for linking up Stacy McCain. He and others probably also induced Patterico, whom I respect, to question whether Stacy is a racist based on a statement that people naturally feel revolted by miscegenation. [But see Stacy for the context]

Jeff has a cogent analysis of the dialogical dynamics here, and revisits the linguistic issues here. Attila and Mike also weigh in on Stacy's side.

Do I think that Stacy McCain is a racist? No, I don't. I completely disagree with his unfortunate assertion that it is natural to be revolted by what is unalike, because that confuses the whole issue of cultural conditioning, which is otherwise central to the whole argument that Stacy is making in the piece from which the comment is extracted.

And it's disappointing to see people playing capture the flag with one another's integrity, yet again. I don't particularly want to be a part of it, but as Stacy says, he's compelled to join battle, because if one does not refute the charge of racism, one assents to the slaughter of one's reputation in the public sphere. It is a death sentence (think about that expression) in the world of ideas. It's also necessary that I write about it, because I know a little of the back story.

I have no personal animosity toward TimB. We've been generally civil to one another. But he's been here warning me that I really don't want to be contaminated by association with him. I believe that TimB sincerely believes that Stacy is a racist, based on the materials that he's read, and based on the conversations that he's been having over at Charles Johnson's House of Dementia and elsewhere. It's also clear--because Tim himself makes it clear in a comment at Patterico's--that he's been trying to rally support for a purge of Stacy for some time. Whether he recognizes this or not, this is concern trolling.

There's another actor in this drama, a blogger of liberal sympathies, who's been working behind the scenes and with whom I've been in contact. I know this person from his having once also been a commenter at Protein Wisdom. In his communications, he's also expressed his (undoubtedly sincere) belief that Stacy is a racist, pointing to this post, and suggesting to me that (because we all like to think of ourselves as particularly scrupulous) I really ought to say something about it. I responded that I thought that the statement about a natural revulsion was absolutely wrong. So, I emailed Stacy who was then in Clay County Kentucky and said, I know you're busy, but you really should respond to this stuff because it's not going to go away. And it didn't, obviously, though I imagine that the debate might have played out the same way, whether or not Stacy had taken my advice.

I'm not going to out the other blogger, nor am I going to entertain any speculation. I just want you to understand that this has been orchestrated for some time.

Jeff says, quite sensibly, that one could argue based on the evidence of the "death sentence" that at one time many years ago, Stacy McCain was a racist, or had racist sympathies, or what you will, but what is the use of that? Since he's been blogging at The Other McCain, he hasn't emitted a single utterance that I myself would consider to be racist. I certainly don't want to be caught up in any kind of purge on behalf of Charles Johnson supporters. CJ has managed to conduct so many purges that he now occupies an infinitesimal portion of an enormously overlaid Venn diagram--way, way over there. He's certainly welcome to his merry little band of Branch Chuckidians, and I have no interest in burning down his compound.

I can also understand why Pat finds that particular statement offensive, because I do, exactly in the same way that I find Ebonie Johnson Cooper's statement of earlier this week offensive. Is she a racist, or did she simply express a sentiment that could be construed as racist? I checked out her church online: is Chris Matthews appalled at its apparent lack of diversity, I wonder?

And so this brings me to happyfeet, one of the most brilliant commenters in the whole 'sphere. He's recently expressed dismay with the treatment of Kevin Jennings. And although I've smacked Jennings around some, I wasn't willing to call for his firing based simply on the various accounts of his relation to the student identified as "Brewster" many years ago. In fact, I got The B-Cast to interview Charles Winecoff (whom I adore) who made the argument that you can hardly fault Jennings for not having ratted the kid out and that Harry Hay wasn't included in a textbook that Jennings edited despite his associating with NAMBLA, rather than because of it. I have a great deal of sympathy for kids who are struggling to come to terms with gay sexuality, or who have suffered from prejudice because of their sexual orientation, the kids that happyfeet says seek refuge in the GSA chapter at their school. Where I part ways, though, is when they begin to distribute "fisting kits," to recommend books with explicit sexual scenes in them, or to offer guides to gay bars. I simply don't see how any of those things, particularly the last one, ought to be offered as part of any curriculum.

And I think that hf and I can disagree about this, if indeed he believes that the right, by and large, are conducting a witch hunt against Kevin Jennings due to homophobia, or in order to rally homophobes, or whatever, disguising their hateyness as principle. I'm not going to state categorically that there aren't any, because I'm pretty sure that if I were to spend the time conducting a search, I could come up with a lot of self-described "conservative" blogs where that is the case.

Tim thinks that I was harsh toward him in the comments over at PW to the first of Jeff's posts linked here, and maybe I was, but I really don't like this backbiting, character assassination by innuendo, and guilt by association. So, fuck it. That's all I hope to have to say on this subject.

Via Jeff's latest, Juliette sums it up, nicely.

*******

I lied. One final word: Kevin Jennings could stop cocooning and do an interview, with someone reasonably tough, to respond to all of this stuff. He should.

When that kid was beaten to death in Chicago with a railroad tie splinter, Obama sent Arne Duncan and Axelrod. I don't know what they did out there. Arne was responsible for those wonderful Chicago schools for a time. But if you're going to have a School Safety Czar (or however you want to term it), then he probably should be out there responding to issues of school safety, instead of hunkering down.

Dan Collins

Dan Collins is a dude who blogs. He used to blog elsewhere. Now he blogs here.

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Ace on Warmaquiddick

Two good pieces over there: one about the "adjustments" required to make the raw temperature station data yield an alarming hockey stick, and one about the Met office's petition expressing faith in the integrity of the "science" performed at CRU. Mind you, the Met is the office in charge of CRU, and the entity that has just announced that it is undertaking a three-year review of the CRU's data.

Naked Emperor News also has video of Algore admitting that historically elevated atmospheric C02 levels have been preceded by periods of warming . . . which shows that the warm-mongers' claims of causality are quite literally preposterous.

Dan Collins

Dan Collins is a dude who blogs. He used to blog elsewhere. Now he blogs here.

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The Fierce Urgency of Tuvalu [UPDATED]

Screw Tibet. Obama has. And Clinton did, too, when he permitted the transfer of missile guidance technology so that a tel-sat company could get cheap launches.

A couple of weeks after Obama visited China to assure them they have every right to claim Tibet and Taiwan, because we owe them money and we don't have any other way of paying them off, the same breed of arrogant asshats who thought that bumper stickers would speak truth to power leap to the imaginary defense of an island of which they'd never heard before they went to Copenhagen:

If you haven't seen Phil Kerpen's appearance on yesterday's B-Cast, you should go over there and check it out. I'll let you know when it's posted.

UPDATE: More on the ginned up danger to islanders

Dan Collins

Dan Collins is a dude who blogs. He used to blog elsewhere. Now he blogs here.

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