Apologies to the net-surfers (or maybe it was one person twice…) who happened upon this site looking for a “Howard Dean – Ann Coulter Porno” or secrets about “John Kerry” and “bisexuality.” All I can say is, there’s some truth to the argument that Dean was in bed with Gingrich in the mid-’90s, but this is a little extreme. And as to Kerry – would that he were, and his implosion in the Democratic primary could at least be remembered as a stand for something…
Author Archives: Josh Eidelson
Mark Kurlansky tells one half of the story of the Nixon election and the Republican “Southern Strategy” that has flourished since, calling the Grand Old Party on its shameless appeals to racism as an electoral tactic. The story he doesn’t tell, however, is the simultaneous breakdown of the New Deal coalition and the agency of the Democrats in its collapse – a story that Democrats have too often obscured in working to expose the mendacious tactics of the right. It was four years earlier that the Democratic Convention sent the Mississippi Democratic Freedom Party home.
Guess who’s against minimum sentencing guidelines now?
The San Antonio Current explores a story the media missed amidst the capture of Hussein – and suggests there are more like it ahead.
Apparently, patriotic Americans don’t let patriotic Americans use almanacs.
I’m generally not one for on-line polls, but I think sending the right-wing American Family Association a message – through their own poll – that Americans reject their campaign to disenfranchise gay families is a worthy cause, especially given that they’ve promised to pass the results on to Congress. I just got an e-mail from the AFA sharing the results of the poll so far, and it looks like the real pro-family folks are clobbering the AFA’s supporters:
I oppose legalization of homosexual marriage and “civil unions” total votes: 201914
I favor legalization of homosexual marriage total votes: 378691
I favor a “civil union” with the full benefits of marriage except for the name: 52238
Pretty embarrassing for them, eh? So if you’re the AFA, and you’re losing your own poll, what do you do? The end of the e-mail may have a hint:
Only votes that have a valid email address associated with them will be counted. We will be purging those with invalid email addresses, which may cause poll results to change somewhat.
No explanation of what renders a vote “invalid,” of course. Must be the same thing that marks so many of my friends’ and relatives’ families invalid as well…
The death toll from the tragic quake in Iran is now estimated at 25,000.
A Pasadena Rabbi on the UFCW strikes:
I have spoken with many congregants at my synagogue about how the strike has impacted their lives. Most seem to be shopping elsewhere. Indeed, so are many of their neighbors, a reality reflected in the near-empty parking lots and substantial drops in profits at the affected stores. Some of my congregants are joining picket lines. Some are helping the workers with food and moral support. Others have urged friends and co-workers coming to holiday potluck parties not to bring food bought from one of these chains. Californians are responding to the strike in heartening, unexpected ways.
What we have not done is to speak out as a community. We Jews owe that much to our history. Many of the workers walking these picket lines are immigrants, as we were. All are working to make better lives for themselves and their families, as we did.
We once fought the hard battle to make it in America. The labor unions helped lift many of us into the middle class. Is it too much to ask, now that we have for the most part prospered and built a better future for our children, that we remember our roots?
Amen.
(Via Zach)
CNN misses the point:
For some, these men who defended a system that allowed slavery should not be memorialized on public schools where thousands of black children are educated.
What about the white students educated there? Isn’t that a problem as well?
Garance Franke-Ruta argues that this package of proposals from Paul Glastis – a “Family Stress Relief Act” composed of Universal After-School Programs, Paid Leave Insurance, and Social Security for Stay-at-Home Parents – represents good policy and good politics that Democratic candidates for President – and the rest of the party – should seize. Amen.
In this week’s American Prospect, Harold Meyerson considers the lessons of HERE’s triumph in making the Las Vegas hotels union business. Las Vegas is in today’s service economy what Detroit once was in an industrial economy: a demonstration that a strong labor movement is the route to a strong middle class. The approach Meyerson describes – directing resources towards organizing towards high density, creating broad-based organizing committees, training rank-and-file to shoulder responsibility, partnering with management for real vocational training – are at the heart of the New Unity Partnership HERE President John Wilhelm and others are pushing for the AFL-CIO.
Josh Eidelson 