June 2015 archive
Jun 24 2015
Battle Flag of the Army of Northern Virginia
Jun 24 2015
Punting the Pundits
“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.
Wednesday is Ladies’ Day.
Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.
Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt
Elizabeth Warren: Trade Agreements Should Not Benefit Industry Only
Recently Hillary Clinton joined Nancy Pelosi and many others in Congress to call on the president to reorient our trade policy so that it produces a good deal for all Americans – not just for a handful of big corporations. Here’s a realistic starting point: Fix the way we enforce trade agreements to ensure a level playing field for everyone. Many of our close allies – major trading partners like Australia, Germany, France, India, South Africa, and Brazil – are already moving in this direction. American negotiators should stop fighting those efforts and start leading them.
We live in a largely free trade world. Over the past 50 years, we’ve opened up countless markets, so that tariffs today are generally low. As a result, modern trade agreements are less about reducing tariffs and more about writing new rules for everything from labor, health, and environmental standards to food safety, prescription drug access, and copyright protections.
Even if those rules strike the right balance among competing interests, the true impact of a trade deal will turn on how well those rules are enforced. And that is the fundamental problem: America’s current trade policy makes it nearly impossible to enforce rules that protect hard-working families, but very easy to enforce rules that favor multinational corporations.
Katrina vanden Heuvel: Pope Francis vs. Wall Street
“Laudato Si,’ ” Pope Francis’s stunning encyclical, has earned much deserved attention for its ringing declaration that climate change poses a real and present danger and is caused “mainly as a result of human activity.” But Pope Francis’s text is far broader. He grounds his call for action on climate change within a fierce critique of the false doctrines of market fundamentalism, calling on us to “reject a magical conception of the market, which would suggest that problems can be solved simply by an increase in the profits of companies or individuals.” The pope, as the Wall Street Journal summarized, issues “an indictment of the global market economy” for “plundering the Earth at the expense of the poor and of future generations.” [..]
The pope condemns the current global economy “where priority tends to be given to speculation and the pursuit of financial gain, which fail to take the context into account, let alone the effects on human dignity and the natural environment. Here we see how environmental deterioration and human and ethical degradation are closely linked.”
Wall Street comes under particular criticism: “Finance overwhelms the real economy. The lessons of the global financial crisis have not been assimilated.” As a result, “whatever is fragile, like the environment, is defenseless before the interests of the deified market, which become the only rule.”
Amy B. Dean: Is the fight for $15 the next civil rights movement?
Black Lives Matter and the push to raise the minimum wage show how racial and economic justice are intertwined
Martin Luther King, Jr. is a national hero for helping end racial segregation in the United States. Yet he spent the last years of his life working as much for economic justice as for racial justice.
When he was shot and killed in Memphis in April 1968, King was in the city on behalf of striking sanitation workers who were trying to organize a union and win higher wages. The predominantly black labor force had to work seven days a week with no vacations, carrying 80 pound crates of rotting garbage. They were being paid wages so low that many were forced to supplement their income with public assistance programs.
Dr. King always understood that the fight for labor rights was integral to attaining true social, political and economic equality. In a speech at the May 1961 AFL-CIO Constitutional Convention, he linked the aspirations of African-Americans in the United States with organized labor’s cause.
Sonali Kolhatkar: How Politicians, Media, and the Gun Lobby Enable Racist Terror
The Charleston Massacre is a product of simmering racial tensions that elites continue to deny. Will the attack be a turning point for change?
On September 15, 1963, the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, was bombed, killing four African-American girls. The incident shocked people around the nation and galvanized the civil rights movement, making leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. even more determined to end segregation. Just as that horrific attack was a reflection of racist violence and became a pivotal event in the civil rights movement, so too should the Charleston shooting be seen as a seminal moment, indicative of simmering racial hatred. However, right-wing conservatives like South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham want us to believe that the massacre of nine African-Americans at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, last week was about religion more than race, a sentiment repeatedly echoed on Fox News. But in fact, the Charleston massacre has much more in common with the 1963 Alabama church bombing. Nine people lost their lives because of a pathology in American society that we continue to be unwilling to address. Will we seize this moment and change history before more terror strikes?
What is different now is that the resurgence of white supremacist attacks on African-Americans comes at the same time that the U.S. government is fighting a “war on terror” against radical Islam. The hypocrisy of calling Boston marathon bomber Dhozkar Tsarnaev a “terrorist,” while labeling the Charleston perpetrator Dylann Roof as a “shooter” who may have been “mentally ill,” has raised the ire of many. And yet almost no politician has used the word “terrorist” as yet to describe Roof. FBI Director James Comey has explicitly ruled out calling it a terrorist act. On his website Roof referred to “black on white crime,” which he googled and then confessed that “I have never been the same since that day.” His statement to one of the survivors of the Charleston massacre that “you rape our women, and you’re taking over our country, and you have to go,” exemplifies a long-standing racist paranoia that African-American men are preying on white women.
Michelle Goldberg: The 2 Degrees of Separation Between Dylann Roof and the Republican Party
News that Earl Holt, president of the white-supremacist Council of Conservative Citizens, has donated $65,000 to Republicans, including Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, and Rick Santorum, has ricocheted around the media since The Guardian broke it last night. No wonder: It reveals a mere two degrees of separation between the racist murderer Dylann Roof, who says the CCC helped inspire him, and the GOP. It might be unfair to make this link if the support only went one way-after all, politicians can’t be held responsible for the views of everyone who gives them money. But the entanglement between the Council of Conservative Citizens and the Republican Party is longer and deeper than just a few checks, and for many years, it was mutual.
“The public sees the CCC and wants to think of it as an extremist group, which it is, but it’s also a group that’s had a foothold historically in mainstream politics,” says Richard Cohen, president of the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Michelle Chen: Someone Has to Sort Your Recycling and It’s a Disgusting and Dangerous Job
The green economy was chugging along at the Nevada paper recycling plant that morning in June 2012, feeding an oversized mound of waste toward a conveyor belt. But when the machine got jammed, the worker who tried to unclog it suddenly got flattened by a 2.5-ton mass of paper. A coworker rushed to extract him using a front-end loader, but according to a government report, the worker died at the hospital two days later, smothered by the dead trees he had been tasked with salvaging.
The industries that pride themselves on being friends of the earth are often hostile to workers, according to new research on the safety conditions in recycling plants. Published by Massachusetts Council for Occupational Safety and Health (MassCOSH), National COSH, and other advocacy groups, the analysis of the industry shows that despite the green sector’s clean, progressive image, workers remain imperiled by old school industrial hazards. Workers face intense stress, dangerous machinery and inadequate safeguards, while toiling in strenuous positions amid constant toxic exposures.
Jun 24 2015
The Breakfast Club (Dreams)
Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:30am (ET) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.
This Day in History
Start of the Berlin blockade during the early Cold War; Boxing champ Jack Dempsey born; Comedian and actor Jackie Gleason of ‘The Honeymooners’ fame dies.
Breakfast Tunes
Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.
Jun 24 2015
On This Day In History June 24
This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.
Find the past “On This Day in History” here.
Click on images to enlarge.
June 24 is the 175th day of the year (176th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 190 days remaining until the end of the year.
On this day in 1957, the U.S. Supreme Court rules that obscenity is not protected by the First Amendment.
Roth v. United States, along with its companion case, Alberts v. California, was a landmark case before the United States Supreme Court which redefined the Constitutional test for determining what constitutes obscene material unprotected by the First Amendment.
Under the common law rule that prevailed before Roth, articulated most famously in the 1868 English case Hicklin v. Regina, any material that tended to “deprave and corrupt those whose minds are open to such immoral influences” was deemed “obscene” and could be banned on that basis. Thus, works by Balzac, Flaubert, James Joyce and D. H. Lawrence were banned based on isolated passages and the effect they might have on children.
Samuel Roth, who ran a literary business in New York City, was convicted under a federal statute criminalizing the sending of “obscene, lewd, lascivious or filthy” materials through the mail for advertising and selling a publication called American Aphrodite (“A Quarterly for the Fancy-Free”) containing literary erotica and nude photography. David Alberts, who ran a mail-order business from Los Angeles, was convicted under a California statute for publishing pictures of “nude and scantily-clad women.” The Court granted a writ of certiorari and affirmed both convictions.
Roth came down as a 6-3 decision, with the opinion of the Court authored by William J. Brennan, Jr.. The Court repudiated the Hicklin test and defined obscenity more strictly, as material whose “dominant theme taken as a whole appeals to the prurient interest” to the “average person, applying contemporary community standards.” Only material meeting this test could be banned as “obscene.” However, Brennan reaffirmed that obscenity was not protected by the First Amendment and thus upheld the convictions of Roth and Alberts for publishing and sending obscene material over the mail.
Congress could ban material, “utterly without redeeming social importance,” or in other words, “whether to the average person, applying contemporary community standards, the dominant theme of the material taken as a whole appeals to the prurient interest.”
With the Court unable to agree as to what constituted obscenity, the Justices were put in the position of having to personally review almost every obscenity prosecution in the United States, with the Justices gathering for weekly screenings of “obscene” motion pictures (Black and Douglas pointedly refused to participate, believing all the material protected). Meanwhile, pornography and sexually oriented publications proliferated as a result of the Warren Court’s holdings, the “Sexual Revolution” of the 1960s flowered, and pressure increasingly came to the Court to allow leeway for state and local governments to crack down on obscenity. During his ill-fated bid to become Chief Justice, Justice Abe Fortas was attacked vigorously in Congress by conservatives such as Strom Thurmond for siding with the Warren Court majority in liberalizing protection for pornography. In his 1968 presidential campaign, Richard Nixon campaigned against the Warren Court, pledging to appoint “strict constructionists” to the Supreme Court.
In Miller v. California (1973), a five-person majority agreed for the first time since Roth as to a test for determining constitutionally unprotected obscenity, superseding the Roth test. By the time Miller was considered in 1973, Brennan had abandoned the Roth test and argued that all obscenity was constitutionally protected, unless distributed to minors or unwilling third-parties.
Jun 24 2015
The Daily/Nightly Show (Life of Brian)
You stop being racist and I’ll stop talking about it.
Tonightly, the Battle Flag of the Army of Northern Virginia with our panel Joe Morton, Naomi Ekperigin, and Rory Albanese.
OK let me break it down, there were 3 official flags of the Confederate States of America. The first was the Stars and Bars that had a Blue Canton with one White Star for each State (varying from 7 to 13) in a circle, superimposed on a field of 3 horizontal Stripes- Red, White, and Red. That one was used from 1861 to 1863. The second was the Stainless Banner which had a Canton based on the Battle Flag of the Army of Northern Virginia superimposed on an all White field. That one was used until spring of 1865 when they added a broad Vertical Red Stripe opposite the Canton on the field because several officers complained that it looked too much like a White Flag of Surrender. The last one is called the Blood Stained Banner ironically.
So these jackasses are not only racists, they’re morons.
Continuity
Too True
This week’s guests-
- Tuesday 6/23: Seth MacFarlane
- Wednesday 6/24: Andrew Napolitano
- Thursday 6/25: Richard Lewis
Seth MacFarlane will be talking about Ted 2 which you might like if you liked Ted. It strikes me as a total waste of time and money not just for the audience but also everyone involved including craft services.
Al Franken’s 2 part web exclusive extended interview and the real news below.
Jun 23 2015
John Oliver Saves the Chickens
A couple of weeks ago HBO’s “Last Week Tonight,” host John Oliver took the chicken industry over the coals for a thorough roasting, uncovering facts that the public may not have known, the exploitation of contract chicken farmers, most of whom living below the poverty line.
Lo and behold, his genius satirical take down had an effect:
Comedian influences Ag Bill, members of Congress say
By Jonathan A. Capriel, Scripts Howard
The Department of Agriculture may be able to protect chicken farmers from industry retaliations in 2016, and satirical news anchor John Oliver may be part of the reason.
A draft of the 2016 Agriculture Appropriations Bill was unanimously approved by a House subcommittee Thursday.
It passed without any amendments that might prohibit the U.S. Department of Agriculture from punishing meatpacking companies if they use deceptive practices against contract livestock and poultry farmers.
Part of the credit goes to the host of HBO’s “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver,” some members of Congress said.
On his show last month, the comedian criticized contracts that poultry producers, including Tyson Foods, Sanderson Farms, and Perdue, have their chicken farmers sign. [..]
These contract farms take out loans to build facilities, buy equipment and chicken feed – usually from the meat processing companies. The farmers are paid to raise the chickens, but they don’t get to sell them. The company owns the animals. Some farmers say they don’t make enough money in this system, but are usually in so much debt they can’t leave it.
The companies also force farmers to compete with each other. Lower-performing farms get less money. [..]
But Oliver also took a jab at members of Congress, who he said, have “fought efforts to protect chicken farmers” by adding riders to appropriations bills.
He told viewers that anyone on the House Appropriations Committee who votes against an amendment giving USDA power to protect farmers was a “chicken f–.” Oliver said this while flashing images of each of the committee members with their states and party affiliations.
The clip has gotten nearly 3 million views on You Tube. [..]
It’s still a long way from passage. The bill still has to pass the full House Committee on Appropriations, where it could be amended. It then must pass the full House and go through the same process in the Senate. If it weren’t fro John Oliver, the bill would never have been written. It’s good to know that someone in Congress watches these left wing programs.
Jun 23 2015
Fast Track Advances
This afternoon the Trade Promotional Authority passed cloture by a hair, 60 – 37 setting it up for passage on Wednesday
The Senate on Tuesday voted to advance President Obama’s trade agenda, approving a measure to end debate on fast-track authority.
The 60-37 motion sets up a vote on final passage on Wednesday. If the Senate approves fast-track or trade promotion authority (TPA), it would then be sent to Obama’s desk to become law.
Fast-track authority would allow Obama to send trade deals to Congress for up-or-down votes. The White House wants the authority to conclude negotiations on a sweeping trans-Pacific trade deal.
Thirteen Democrats backed fast-track in Tuesday’s vote, handing Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) a major legislative victory. Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) voted against the procedural motion.
The bill will then go to President Obama’s desk for his signature. However, the bill is being moved forward does not contain the Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) measure that would provide financial aid and job training to workers who lose their jobs due to foreign competition. TAA, in truth, is a sucker deal
For starters, the money in TAA is a pittance, compare to the direct damage that this deal will do to American workers. And it does nothing to protect consumers and citizens from the other elements of the deal that weaken regulatory standards.
Trade Adjustment Assistance is not really about doing much for workers. Mainly, it’s about giving Democrats who are in bed with corporate elites some political cover. The cover is pretty threadbare.
It also stands little chance of passing in the House, even if the Senate manages to pass it, as House Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has promised. The president has said the he would no sign TPA without the TAA.
Many Senate Democrats insisted their vote on Wednesday was conditional on the passage of separate TAA legislation. The Senate will likely pass that legislation on Wednesday, but the bill faces steeper challenges in the House, where Republicans overwhelmingly oppose it. Obama has said he wants both TAA and the fast-track bill to be enacted. House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) has said he will deliver the votes necessary for its passage.
White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said Tuesday that Obama expects Congress to send him the TAA bill this week, but didn’t say whether the president would sign the TPA bill before that happened. House Democrats could join Republicans to vote down TAA, potentially daring Obama to sign fast-track without the program. [..]
(Sen. Patti) Murray, on her way to the Senate floor, told reporters she’d been given assurances by McConnell and Boehner that Congress would take up assistance to workers displaced by the deal. In the prior Senate vote on TPA, which took place in May, Murray had urged Democrats not to vote with McConnell without major concessions from the GOP leader. She and Cantwell ultimately cut a deal with McConnell to get a vote reauthorizing the Export-Import Bank. McConnell embarrassed Murray by delivering only a nonbinding vote on the measure.
Democrats now hope to attach a reauthorization to a highway bill as an amendment.
Wyden said Tuesday that Boehner’s late promises helped win votes.
While, eventually, the Trans-Pacific Trade Agreement will most likely pass the Senate, its fate in the House is unknown sonce the Tea Party caucus opposes any agenda proposed by Pres. Obama. GOP presidential candidates Senators Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Rand Paul (R-KY) are also opposed to the bill and are reliant on the Tea Party votes of their base. Both voted against TPA passage today. If you’re shaking your head in wonder that the sane Democrats would have to rely on the GOP lunatic fringe, you’re not alone
Jun 23 2015
Punting the Pundits
“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.
Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.
Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt
Dean Baker: The TPP, Drug Patents, and President Clinton
There are many serious issues raised by the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), but the one that may have the greatest long-term impact is its provisions on drug patents. The explicit purpose is to make patent protection stronger and longer. While these provisions are likely to lead to higher drug prices in the United States, they will have their greatest impact in the developing world.
In most developing countries, drugs are far cheaper than in the United States. This is especially the case in India. The country has a world-class generic industry that produces high-quality drugs that typically sell for a small fraction of the price in the United States. For example, the generic version of the Hepatitis C drug Sovaldi can be purchased in India for less than $1,000 a treatment. The patent protected version sells in the United States for $84,000.
The U.S. drug industry desperately wants to eliminate this sort of price gap, which can exceed a ratio of one hundred to one. While India is not in the TPP, the goal of TPP proponents is to expand the pact over time so that India would eventually be included and therefore be subject to its strong patent rules.
Jeb Lund: Agreeing to remove the Confederate flag isn’t courageous. It’s just politics
In response to a white supremacist’s massacre of nine black citizens of Charleston in a historic black church, South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley on Monday finally answered the question, “Should the Confederate flag be taken down from state house grounds?” In the pantheon of gimme questions, it is one of the gimmiest, somewhat more difficult than “Should we have a do-over of the Iraq War” and only barely easier than, “Do I want to be drowned in a sack with rats?”
The suit-fillers of Beltway media passed an energetic “She said yes!” through the Twitter-madding crowd with the enthusiasm of a lummox who proposes to his girlfriend on the ballgame Jumbotron and thumbs-up at 30,000 people after she bows to the peer pressure. Chris Cilizza thinks Nikki Haley has “potential”, and whomever wrote the headline for his piece quoted the language of Hubie Brown calling the NBA draft. Someone will spend today calling her brave. It is the faintest of praise for the faintest of gestures – a politician putting her convenient brand on an issue that already threatened to be inevitable – and it is one Haley herself was happy to undermine even as she was making it.
For all the congratulation Haley will doubtless garner, she still tooted the whistle of southern Lost Cause rhetoric loud and hard enough to send a few terriers home with burst eardrums.
Bill Moyers and Bernard Weisberger: On TPP, Congress’s Cat Burglars Are Pulling a Fast One
“With cat-like tread upon our foes we steal.” So boasted Gilbert and Sullivan’s Pirates of Penzance as they decided to try a little burglary for a change. And “steal” is the appropriate word.
It’s hardly a surprise that Republican congressional leaders and their cadre of Democratic allies spurred on by Barack Obama are resorting to a bagful of parliamentary tricks to put the Trans-Pacific Partnership on a “take it or leave it but you can’t change it” fast-track to enactment by Tuesday.
No sooner had the first round gone to pro-democracy forces than Speaker Boehner — forever remembered as the man who handed out tobacco lobby checks to members on the House floor — promptly scheduled a new vote allowing time to bring pressure on naysayers.
Michael Arceneaux: The Key Thing Conservatives Don’t Get About Obama’s Use Of ‘N*****’
I think I speak for many black people when I say that I’m wonderfully bored with white people’s obsession with policing whether or not it’s ever appropriate for a black person to use “nigger” and all its variances. The majority never really has a right to question the marginalized-but particularly when context is key. And yet, they do it anyway, again and again. This time President Obama is the target, but the intent is the same: to be caught up in a word rather than the crux of an argument about systemic racism. [..]
I wish I could be amused by mass media’s disingenuousness. President Obama is not the first president to use “nigger,”-he’s merely the first one not to use it as a slur. For all his work on passing civil rights legislation, former Democratic president Lyndon B. Johnson let the word fly freely and routinely from his mouth. The same goes for former Republican president Richard Nixon, and for Harry Truman, when he called Adam Clayton Powell “that damned nigger preacher.”
And, you know, all those other presidents who owned slaves and expressed deep contempt for black people.
So, with that in mind, what purpose does it serve asking whether or not the first black president’s use of “nigger” in the context of a larger reflection on covert versus overt racism relevant? Because a few white people will object? Who cares? How much longer are we going to entertain thoughts of whether or not there is a double standard at play? This is a ruse of the highest order. Even if you don’t agree with the approach, black people use “nigga” in a different context than “nigger.” Whites have every other advantage over blacks; they can take the “L” on this one word.
Jun 23 2015
On This Day In History June 23
This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.
Find the past “On This Day in History” here.
Click on images to enlarge.
June 23 is the 174th day of the year (175th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 191 days remaining until the end of the year.
On this day in 1967, President Lyndon B. Johnson meets with Soviet Premier Aleksei Kosygin. Hopes for better U.S.-Soviet relations run high as U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson meets with Soviet Premier Aleksei Kosygin in Glassboro, New Jersey, for a three-day summit. The meeting ended inconclusively, however, as issues such as Vietnam and the Middle East continued to divide the two superpowers.
With the United States gradually losing ground in the Vietnam War, the administration was looking for other solutions to the conflict.
On 5 June 1967 the Six-Day War began between Israel and the Arab states. The war led to an increase in Soviet-US diplomatic contact and cooperation; there were some who hoped this could continue to help the US solve the Vietnam war and other pressing international issues. Several days later the Soviet Union sent Premier Alexei Kosygin to New York to hold a speech on the then-ongoing Middle Eastern crisis at the United Nations headquarters. When the United States government was informed of this the Americans gladly welcomed Kosygin to a meeting between him and President Lyndon B. Johnson. On 13 June 1967 Johnson sought out J. William Fulbright, a Senator, at a White House reception. Llewellyn Thompson, then US ambassador to the USSR, believed that a conference could “start the process of moving toward an understanding with the Soviets”. Fulbright even believed that Johnson was reconsidering his Vietnam strategy. Later Fulbright wrote two letters to Johnson about the importance of a summit between the two nations. Johnson agreed, and wrote a letter in return, which said they were waiting for a Soviet response for US invitation. Walt Rostow, the National Security Adviser at the time, said it was a 20 percent chance of the summit having a good effect on Soviet-US relations, and only a 10 percent chance of the summit going awry.
The Soviet Political Bureau (Politburo) were divided over the usefulness of the summit. Andrei Gromyko, the Minister of Foreign Affairs at the time and still not a member of the Politburo, was able to win support for it. Gromyko noted that Soviet-US dialogue which had been suspended in 1963 should be reactivated, despite the Vietnam War putting a great deal strain on the two countries’ relations.
Kosygin agreed to address the United Nations wished to conduct the summit in New York. Johnson, wary of encountering protesters against the war in Vietnam, preferred to meet in Washington, D.C.. Roughly equidistant, Hollybush was selected as a compromise. The summit took place at Glassboro State College (now Rowan University) in Glassboro, New Jersey.
Jun 23 2015
The Daily/Nightly Show (The Al Franken Decade)
You stop being racist and I’ll stop talking about it.
Tonightly Obama drops the N-bomb. Our panel is Gayle King, Riki Lindhome, and Jordan Carlos.
Continuity
If you haven’t seen this yet, you really should.
This week’s guests-
- Monday 6/22: Al Franken
- Tuesday 6/23: Seth MacFarlane
- Wednesday 6/24: Andrew Napolitano
- Thursday 6/25: Richard Lewis
Al Franken is kind of a disappointment to me. I’ve met him personally exactly once at a reception to promote his candidacy and he’s funny as you might imagine and doesn’t give off the same sellout weasel vibe that radiates from Joe Lieberman like the heat from a baking, humid parking lot when you open an air conditioned door, the kind that smacks you in the face from 20 feet away.
On the other hand he’s bad on Intellectual Property, not so good on trade, fair to middling on most everything else, and pretty ok on Foreign Policy and Drone Assassination, Domestic Surveillance, and Torture.
So there are worse Senators, but there are better ones too. Feel the Bern.
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