Church in the U.S.: I'm not interested in your jeremiads about the #SCOTUS #DOMA decision since you did nothing to counter no-fault divorce.
— James K.A. Smith (@james_ka_smith) June 26, 2013
Rush Limbaugh, who paid a married gay man millions to sing @ his 4th wedding, is screaming of the danger of gay marriage.
— John Fugelsang (@JohnFugelsang) June 26, 2013
The Core initiative was started in 2007 by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers, a bipartisan effort to come up with a common set of K-12 standards in English language arts and math across states that would better prepare students for colleges and careers than in the past.
The standards were written by school reformer and entrepreneur David Coleman, who now heads the College Board, and Susan Pimental of Achieve Inc., an organization created to advance “standards-based” education. Starting in 2009, the Obama administration, in its main education initiative, required states that wanted to compete for Race to the Top reform dollars to adopt the standards. It also gave some $360 million to two consortia of states developing standardized tests aligned to the Core, exams whose results would be used to evaluate teachers, another controversial part of the Obama reform agenda.Later she writes,
Duncan, in his speech to the newspaper editors, said the federal government didn't start or write the standards, and that is true. He said that it wasn't mandated either, though critics argue that it was coerced. He was also right when he said the Core is not a curriculum (even though the Core authors released a book of criteria to education publishers about what should be in Core curriculum).
But he didn't mention the rushed implementation, nor the hundreds of millions of dollars the federal government has plowed into the testing creation effort. He has said for years that the Core-aligned tests would be “game changers” and be able to assess students much more broadly, but he didn't say Tuesday that that isn't true. It turns out there wasn't enough time or money to create those kinds of tests.Diane Ravitch quotes Strauss and then sums up the Core's history:
Another angle: the Gates Foundation plowed more than $100 million into every aspect of the Common Core: the development, the evaluation, the implementation, the advocacy, on and on.
It seems that most of the nation’s grassroots are growing in Seattle, then watered inside the Beltway.
The energetic ideological base of the Republican Party is a nationalist, identity-politics movement for relatively well-to-do older white Americans known as the "tea party". The tea party is interested in bald eagles, American flags, the founding fathers, Jesus Christ, fighter jets, empty libertarian rhetoric, and other markers of "authentic" American identity and supremacy.A similar list could be made for the Democrats' ideological base. Off the the top of my head, there's a list of "D" words that interest Democrats: discourse, diversity, the downtrodden.
Are you uncomfortable with ambiguity? It’s a common condition, but a highly problematic one. The compulsion to quell that unease can inspire snap judgments, rigid thinking, and bad decision-making.
Fortunately, new research suggests a simple anecdote for this affliction: Read more literary fiction.
A trio of University of Toronto scholars, led by psychologist Maja Djikic, report that people who have just read a short story have less need for what psychologists call “cognitive closure.” Compared with peers who have just read an essay, they expressed more comfort with disorder and uncertainty—attitudes that allow for both sophisticated thinking and greater creativity.Researchers offer the following reasons why fiction has this effect on readers but non-fiction does not.
“The thinking a person engages in while reading fiction does not necessarily lead him or her to a decision,” they note. This, they observe, decreases the reader’s need to come to a definitive conclusion.
“Furthermore,” they add, “while reading, the reader can stimulate the thinking styles even of people he or she might personally dislike. One can think along and even feel along with Humbert Humbert in Lolita, no matter how offensive one finds this character. This double release—of thinking through events without concerns for urgency and permanence, and thinking in ways that are different than one’s own—may produce effects of opening the mind.”
At least one-quarter of women are sexually assaulted during their college years, according to studies published as recently as 2000 by the U.S. Justice Department and crime researchers. About 27 percent of college women are raped or suffer attempted rape, according to researchers at Wayne State University.
A relatively small minority of men are responsible for most of these attacks, according to David Lisak, a former University of Massachusetts clinical psychologist who consults to the U.S. military and colleges on sexual assault.
In Lisak’s study of 1,882 college men, 120 admitted committing rape or attempted rape. They admitted to 483, or an average of 4 assaults each.I've got a step-daughter in college now. Every year I write recommendations to help young women get admitted to college or to get scholarships to pay for college. These numbers frighten me. A lot.
Never gonna happen in the US. Proper gun safety is a necessity though. RT @fulsomprison: (cont) tl.gd/m137kgSackhoff has a bit of cult following because she played Starbuck in Battlestar Galactica and plays Vic Moretti on Longmire.* Her timeline has tweets about filming Longmire, hockey, and her Harley. None seem overtly political.
— Katee Sackhoff (@kateesackhoff) June 10, 2013
"As I listen to the debate today and earlier debate on this bill, I can't help but think of a title of a book, Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus. And it's a book about the fact that men sort of think one way in their own brain, in their own world. And women think another way in their brain and in their own world. And it really talks about the way that men and women can do a better job at communicating.
"Because if you listen to the debate today, in my mind -- a man's mind -- I hear really two fundamental issues. From the other side of the aisle, I hear the conversation being about 'free. This is free, we need to take it, and it's free. And we need to do it now.' And that's the fundamental message that my brain receives. Now, my brain, being a man's brain, sort of thinks differently, because I say, 'Well, it's not -- if it's free, is it really free? Because I say, in my brain, there's a cost to this.'"Sometimes, the brain should tell one not to say anything at all.
Sen. Lindsey Graham would propose censoring Americans' "snail" mail if he thought it would help protect national security, the South Carolina Republican said Tuesday. But for now, he says he doesn't think it's necessary.
Faced with questions about the disclosure that the National Security Agency has been collecting phone and email records of citizens, Graham pointed to a World War II-era program in which the federal government censored mail. He said it was appropriate at the time and that he would support reinstating the program if it aided security efforts.
"In World War II, the mentality of the public was that our whole way of life was at risk, we're all in. We censored the mail. When you wrote a letter overseas, it got censored. When a letter was written back from the battlefield to home, they looked at what was in the letter to make sure they were not tipping off the enemy," Graham, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, told reporters on Capitol Hill. "If I thought censoring the mail was necessary, I would suggest it, but I don't think it is."Graham says, "The First Amendment right to speak is sacrosanct, but it has limits," I would guess nearly everything conceived by humans has limits. The only thing that seems limitless is Graham's desire to limit civil liberties.
Thune on Clapper: "Lying is a harsh word to use. He was clearly parsing his words."
— Jonathan Ellis (@argusjellis) June 12, 2013
This convergence is not new: consider, for instance, the astonishing overlap between the views expressed by the socialist George Orwell in 1984 and those expressed by the Christian conservative C. S. Lewis in That Hideous Strength, right down to the brilliant parodies in both of foully obfuscatory bureaucratic language. Both writers see the rhetorical subtlety by which the pink police state entrenches itself before ultimately revealing its true character. (Orwell didn’t seem to know quite what to make of Lewis’s novel when he reviewed it — he strongly disliked its supernaturalism — but it ended up having a significant influence on the development of 1984. Lewis for his part didn’t especially care for 1984 but thought Animal Farm was “a work of genius.”)
"My stories,"said Arthur. "The science of deduction. The reasoning detective. The solution delivered partly in a satisfying denouement. They're all horseshit."
Bram smiled. "I know," he said. "That's why we need them."
Arthur considered this. "I've moved on," he offered after a long pause. "I've been working on realism. History."
"Realism," Bram repeated. "Realism, I think, is fleeting. It's the romance that will live forever."Earlier, the character Stoker had taken the long view:
Because in a hundred years, no one will care about me. Or you. Or Oscar [Wilde]. We stopped caring about Oscar years ago and we were his bloody friends. No, what they'll remember are the stories. They'll remember Holmes. And Watson. And Dorian Gray."To test Stoker's theory, let's do a little quiz. Does anyone remember Philander C. Knox or Robert C. Vessey? They were kind of big deals in 1913. The former was the American Secretary of State and the latter South Dakota's governor in 1913. On the other hand, early everyone knows about Pollyanna, the character brought to life in 1913.
Amusingly, the new Common [sic] Core [sic] State [sic] Standards [sic] are totally schizoid on this issue of abstraction and generalization in education and social engineering. On the one hand, the supporting materials around those standards [sic] call for a great RETURN TO THE TEXT—for having our students read substantive works with higher Lexile levels and having them do close reading of those texts. The supporting materials around the new standards also call for subordinating skills and strategies instruction, for making these incidental to emphasis on the text. Well and good. But the standards themselves are more of the same. They are lists of abstract, general skills and strategies, and they encourage the continuation of a kind of schooling that focuses on form rather than on content (knowledge of the world and knowledge of procedures). And so the new [sic] standards [sic] are, sadly, more of the same. However, lists of abstractions have appeal to those who think that they can confidently implement their social engineering based upon their own abstract principles like “you get what you measure,” so it’s not surprising that the social engineers would LOVE the new CCSS in ELA.
We need to return to reading “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”—to focusing on this poem, this essay, this novel, and what it communicates, and we need to retreat from having our students read to practice their inferencing skills or their identifying the main idea or context clues skills. We read because we are interested in Hedda Gabler or Madame Bovery and the plights they are in, not because we wish to hone our understanding of the structure of the novel IN GENERAL. That will come, but it can come ONLY as a result of first READING the novels. In our rush to make ELA education scientific, in our emphasis on abstract form over content, we’ve forgotten why we read. We don’t read to hone our inferencing skills. We don’t read because we are fascinated by where, in this essay, the author has placed the main idea. Our purpose in reading is not to find out how the author organized her story in order to create suspense. We read because we are interested in what the text has to say, and the metacognitive abstraction about the text is incidental. It grows out of and relates to what this particular text does and takes meaning from that. The Common Core State Standards in ELA is just another set of blithering, poorly thought out abstractions. And starting from there, instead of starting with the text and its content, is a mistake.
Beware the social engineer and his or her abstractions.”In short, the Common Core, when implemented properly, reduces Sherlock Holmes to the status of Philander C. Knox. Shepherd concludes,
“One could implement the Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts perfectly and have students entirely miss what reading literature is about. They would not come away from their literature classes with the understanding that when they read a literary work well, they enter into an imaginative world and have an experience there, in all its concreteness and specificity, and it is then THAT experience that has significance, that matters, that has “meaning.”
You can’t skip the experience and go directly to the meaning, and that’s what students are encouraged to do if their lessons concentrate on abstract, formal notions from some list of standards rather than upon reading as experiencing. Now, when I say that reading literature is experiencing, I do not mean that all readings are therefore equally good. Literature makes use of conventions and inventions designed to give people particular imaginative experiences that will be common to readers, with, of course, some variation, experiences that will mean something, not mean anything at all that the reader takes away from it. Literature counts on the fact that when people have an experience like this, they will take away common learnings. Like Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner, a person tells a story because there is something that he or she wishes to communicate. The Vietnam vets used to say, “You wouldn’t know because you weren’t there, man.” Well, reading literature well is about going THERE. It’s about having that experience, carefully arranged so that you will come from it with certain learnings, often with wisdom.
Find THAT in the Common Core State Standards for literature.
Good luck.”I've written before about the Core's misplaced emphasis on non-fiction. Shepherd's analysis points out something that may be more important. The Core will not only decrease the amount of fiction students read. It will also weaken their ability to read, understand, and learn from the fiction they are assigned.
One of the biggest names in South Dakota Republican politics has decided not to run for U.S. Senate, heading off what could have been a fierce intra-party battle.
After months of consideration, Rep. Kristi Noem announced Tuesday that she won’t run for Senate against former Gov. Mike Rounds. Instead, she’ll seek a third term in the House of Representatives.Those calling for a "true conservative" to challenge Mike Rounds for the Republican nomination for the open U.S. Senate seat must, therefore, continue their search and lamentations.
So, much of the country is guilty of shameless hypocrisy? There's certainly something to this, though there's one caveat to keep in mind.
Clearly, Democrats are more comfortable with NSA surveillance under a Democratic administration, and Republicans are more comfortable with NSA surveillance under a Republican administration. There is, however, one small catch -- it's not an apples to apples comparison.
In 2006, the poll question dealt with a warrantless surveillance program in which the Bush administration exceeded its legal authority with no judicial check or congressional approval. In 2013, the Obama administration, at least given what we know now, appears to be acting within its legal authority, relying in part on the courts, and acting within a law approved by bipartisan majorities.
For critics of government snooping, that's cold comfort, but when it comes to gauging public attitudes, the bipartisan hypocrisy comes with an asterisk.The asterisk is, of course, an allusion to the asterisk that accompanied Roger Maris's record breaking 61 home runs because he played a 162 game season while Babe Ruth played only 154 season. That asterisk was unwarranted in 1961. Benen's is unwarranted now.
Eager to take advantage of how it's now 1950, Warner Bros. is reportedly adapting Archie Comics into a feature film to be directed by Pitch Perfect director Jason Moore. Carrie remake writer Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa is handling the screenplay, having previously delved into the world of Archie with comics runs on Afterlife with Archie and Archie Meets Glee, both of which are modern things people apparently purchased. Aguirre-Sacasa's hiring and prior résumé led some to quickly hypothesize that the films would include Afterlife's zombies (though not Glee characters, for some reason), but Variety has since clarified that the film will see Archie in a "teenage midlife crisis" that sees him trying to find purpose before graduation, and assumedly deciding whether he wants his favored female face to have blonde hair or black hair. Hopefully they don't mess this up, because you love Archie.
Instead of pulling back from the lawlessness we saw under Bush (which most of Obama's enthusiastic supporters must surely have expected in the 2008 campaign) Obama has simply legalized the vast majority of what Bush did--and then some, in some instances.
This is not your father's rule of law. It's not your rule of law. It's not Madison or Montesquieu's rule of law. It's George Orwell and Franz Kafka's rule of law . . .
20 “Announce this to the descendants of Jacob and proclaim it in Judah:
21 Hear this, you foolish and senseless people, who have eyes but do not see, who have ears but do not hear:
22 Should you not fear me?” declares the Lord. “Should you not tremble in my presence? I made the sand a boundary for the sea, an everlasting barrier it cannot cross. The waves may roll, but they cannot prevail; they may roar, but they cannot cross it.
23 But these people have stubborn and rebellious hearts;they have turned aside and gone away.
24 They do not say to themselves,‘Let us fear the Lord our God, who gives autumn and spring rains in season, who assures us of the regular weeks of harvest.’
25 Your wrongdoings have kept these away; your sins have deprived you of good.
26 “Among my people are the wicked who lie in wait like men who snare birds and like those who set traps to catch people.
27 Like cages full of birds, their houses are full of deceit;they have become rich and powerful
28 and have grown fat and sleek.Their evil deeds have no limit;they do not seek justice.They do not promote the case of the fatherless; they do not defend the just cause of the poor.
29 Should I not punish them for this?” declares the Lord.“Should I not avenge myself on such a nation as this?
30 “A horrible and shocking thing has happened in the land:
31 The prophets prophesy lies, the priests rule by their own authority, and my people love it this way. But what will you do in the end?
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| Left to Right: Captain Krypton, Ms. Wonder, and The Amazing Spider-Bat |
Having a “democratic surveillance” state sounds like an oxymoron, like having a cuddly hand grenade. Perhaps it would be better to just dismantle the surveillance state entirely and be done with it. And indeed removing the laws associated with the Global War on Terror would do much to remove the authoritarian elements of this state.
[T]he typical pattern is for one party to be pretty extreme while the other is pretty moderate. And that pattern shows up more or less where you'd expect it. For example, New York Democrats are very liberal because they can be, while New York Republicans are moderate because they have to be. Flip that around for Mississippi.The maps use the requisite blue to illustrate Democrats' ideology and standard red for Republicans. The darker shades obviously show a more intensely ideological party membership in a state's legislature.
The reaction to the National Security Agency (NSA)’s secret online spying program, PRISM, has been polarized between seething outrage and some variant on “what did you expect?” Some have gone so far as to say this program helps open the door to fascism, while others have downplayed it as in line with the way that we already let corporations get ahold of our personal data.
That second reaction illustrates precisely why this program is so troubling. The more we accept perpetual government and corporate surveillance as the norm, the more we change our actions and behavior to fit that expectation — subtly but inexorably corrupting the liberal ideal that each person should be free to live life as they choose without fear of anyone else interfering with it.Beauchamp's second paragraph seems so clear and blindingly obvious that I'm angry at myself for not being able to articulate that sentiment.
Aristotelian virtue is defined in Book II of the Nicomachean Ethics as a purposive disposition, lying in a mean and being determined by the right reason. As discussed above, virtue is a settled disposition. It is also a purposive disposition. A virtuous actor chooses virtuous action knowingly and for its own sake. It is not enough to act kindly by accident, unthinkingly, or because everyone else is doing so; you must act kindly because you recognize that this is the right way to behave. Note here that although habituation is a tool for character development it is not equivalent to virtue; virtue requires conscious choice and affirmation.It's hard to understand how these programs allow individuals to to develop the habit and desire necessary for virtue. If Blanchard ever gets to this spot in the Interwebs' hinterlands, I'd appreciate hearing his view.
As a divided Montana Republican Party gathers Friday in Bozeman for its annual state convention, a former legislator for the GOP is suggesting the party should rate its candidates and officeholders on how they uphold party principles – and perhaps withhold support from those who don’t.
“How many times can you vote against (Republican principles) and still be a Republican?” asks Derek Skees, a one-term state representative from Whitefish who ran unsuccessfully for state auditor last year.The Missoulian article continues:
Skees, an outspoken conservative, recently sent an email to fellow conservatives within the party, asking whether they’d support a party resolution to create “unity principles” that candidates must largely support if they expect help from the Montana GOP.
He also said if a Republican legislator’s votes showed lack of support for the principles, he or she could be targeted for defeat in the next Republican primary election.With all due respect to the Missoulian the proposal sounds more like a scorecard than a "loyalty oath":
Skees, a convention delegate, said he’s still refining his proposal, but the general idea is to choose perhaps 10 basic principles the define Republicans and use them to rate a Republican lawmaker’s votes or what a GOP candidate stands for.
If they vote or disagree more than 20 percent of the time, for example, then they wouldn’t get support from the party – and voters would be informed on the ratings as well, he said.
Skees said identifying the true conservatives will help the party win elections, because a majority of Montana voters are conservatives and want to vote for those who will represent them.
Republican legislators who voted with Democrats on key issues during the Legislature “severely damaged the credibility of the Republican Party in the state of Montana,” he said.Recent DWC comments have many comments filled with scorecard love like the following:
And as far as what Kristi has said or promised, it really doesn’t mean much. While I listen to the words, it is the ACTIONS that matter and the SCORECARDS DON’T LIE. When you have a legislator with a voting record of around 60% when measured against conservative principles, they are not a strong conservative.There have also been comments excoriating Republicans who vote with Democrats:
Imagine that, seems House [Minority] Leader Bernie Hunhoff, and EVERYONE of the Democrats in the South Dakota Legislature, agree with Rep Hoffman & former Senator Schoenbeck and want MORE government & MORE taxes:
http://legis.state.sd.us/sessions/2013/Bill.aspx?Bill=SCR3
Let the words sink in, “Republicans” advocating for MORE taxes even though there is no identified imperative need for the monies to be taken away from South Dakotans. “Republicans” advocating that MORE government is good, and that we need MORE government involvement in our lives.DWC commenters also love the Republican platform. There's this comment:
The platform is also what we Republicans say is how we are going to fix the problems that are affecting South Dakotans. If you think raising taxes, increasing government spending, and expanding government is the answer.. then you are working against what Republicans believe is the answer and that is to reduce taxes, spending, and government.
Can’t have your cake and eat it too. You want to claim to be a Republican to get elected? Then vote like one when elected.
If you can’t support the party platform, then run as an Independent.And this one:
If they promote liberal policies and oppose conservative ones, they are the ones I was talking about. You can read the GOP platform to find out what conservative principles are, in case you are clueless about that. Once you understand what conservative principles are, it’s easy to know who I was talking about.
I think you owe Republicans who believe in Republican values, and are being betrayed by these frauds, an apology–as do those who are betraying those values.The South Dakota folk even talk about the party making sure that candidates are pure:
Republicans in elected leadership positions governing and legislating like liberals. However, I think we need to be judicious in culling these RINOs from the herd. We cannot just wave a magic wand and have them all immediately disappear.
Some of this has been going on for so long I am not even sure if all Republicans really truly understand what conservative principles and values are. Perhaps if they took some time to study these issues, they may think a little differently when they look in the mirror? Maybe it would even help them govern and legislate a little more like true conservatives?
The most distressing thing is how many in the party treat the far right conservatives. They are driving a wedge between them and the Republican Party that is only pushing them further away. Yes, these conservatives are passionate about their beliefs, but they are not wrong. They may be overly aggressive in their efforts to cull RINOs from the herd, but they are not wrong. And yes they may be misguided in some of the ways they try to accomplish their mission, but they are not wrong. The Republican Party is being taken over by progressive liberals.
Perhaps if the Republican Party was to exert a little “quality control” over who wears the big red “R”, that just might solve all of the problems? But no, I see none of that occurring. Their energy is spent on trying to marginalize the conservatives who are passionate about the conservative values and principles that should be the foundation of the Republican Party. That is what I see as WRONG.One would think the Montana Republicans could be more original. If I were a DWC commenter, I'd be angry they were taking ideas without giving credit.
The National Security Agency and the FBI are tapping directly into the central servers of nine leading U.S. Internet companies, extracting audio, video, photographs, e-mails, documents and connection logs that enable analysts to track a person’s movements and contacts over time. . .
The technology companies, which participate knowingly in PRISM operations, include most of the dominant global players of Silicon Valley. They are listed on a roster that bears their logos in order of entry into the program: “Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, Apple.” PalTalk, although much smaller, has hosted significant traffic during the Arab Spring and in the ongoing Syrian civil war.
Dropbox , the cloud storage and synchronization service, is described as “coming soon.”These eight seconds from HBO's Treme are unsafe for work and anyone offended by concentrated profanity, but they sum up my response to these revelations and those about data mining Verizon's records.
Catherine Gewertz reports in Education Week that the new Common Core tests created by the PARCC consortium of states will require up to ten hours, depending on grade level.Here is the projection:
“The amount of time students will have to complete both the performance-based and end-of-year components in math and English/language arts:
Grade 3: 8 hoursGrades 4-5: 9 hours, 20 minutesGrades 6-8: 9 hours, 25 minutes
Grades 9-10: 9 hours, 45 minutesGrades
11-12: 9 hours, 55 minutes”I do remember my previous discussion with Josh Verges, so I know that South Dakota is part of the Smarter Balance consortium not the PARCC consortium. I also believe Emerson was correct when he asserts that bureaucracies prefer conformity to any other quality. I can confidently predict South Dakota's test will approximate these times.**
During the January 2013 focus group research, respondents in the Columbus group of young men who voted for Obama were asked to name who they viewed as leaders of the Democratic Party. They named prominent former or currently elected officials: Pelosi, the Clintons, Obama, Kennedy, Gore.When those same respondents were asked to name Republican leaders, they focused heavily on media personalities and commentators: Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck.The report's subsequent paragraph may be as important:
Yet across all six groups, when the topic turned to future leaders of the parties, the GOP was clearly in a stronger position. Asked to name up-and-coming Republican stars, these young Obama voters could point to a number of examples. Marco Rubio, Chris Christie, Paul Ryan, Bobby Jindal, and Rand Paul were all mentioned.In short, people recognized as leaders should be likable and actually be leaders. Also, it's good to have young members ready to step up. The people the focus group identified as Republican leaders are an unlikable lot unless one is a true believer.
Sen. Lindsey Graham said Thursday that he is “glad” that the National Security Agency is collecting millions of telephone records — including his own — from one of the nation’s largest telecommunications companies in an attempt to combat terrorism.
Mr. Graham said that he is a Verizon customer and has no problem with the company turning over records to the government if it helps it do its job. The South Carolina Republican said that people who have done nothing wrong have nothing to worry about because the NSA is mining the phone records for people with suspected ties to terrorism.If I have done nothing wrong, I suppose I have nothing to worry about if the police bring drug dogs into my house without a warrant. If I have done nothing wrong, I have nothing to worry about if the police stop me without probable cause while I'm walking around the park and take me to the police station to ask me questions about my associations with Al Qaeda or if I've ever been a member of the Communist Party.
Fox News spent 4 hours covering IRS hearing and only 14 minutes on military sexual assault hearing. mm4a.org/18Oyhpn
— Media Matters (@mmfa) June 5, 2013
Republicans and Democrats don’t seem to agree on very much these days. They’re divided on the kinds of television shows they watch, cars they drive and beers they drink. And now new research by political scientists at the University of Chicago adds one more thing to that list: baby names.If the surveys are to be believed, Republicans tend to watch golf or Survivor, drive a pickup, and drink Coors Light. Democrats lean towards watching NBA basketball or Family Guy, driving a hybrid, and drinking Heineken.
Oliver and colleagues found that, for both boy and girl babies, “softer” sounds were more prominent among educated whites living in more Democratic or liberal neighborhoods. That is, a boy’s name like “Julian” or “Liam” or a girl’s name like “Malia” would be more common in Democratic neighborhoods. A boy’s name like “Trig” or a girl’s name like “Bristol” would be more common in Republican neighborhoods.In other words, Liam will likely be behind the well of the hybrid, and Trig will likely be behind the wheel of the 4x4.
Oliver and colleagues also emphasize that these partisan or ideological differences were largely confined to better-educated whites. As other political science research shows, partisanship and ideology often operate most strongly within this group. Thus, it is a mistake simply to divide America into red and blue. This leads to the paper’s provocative conclusion:After reading these article I expect someone to re-write Romeo and Juliet as a story about a Democrat Julian who falls in love with a Republican Bristol. The two commit suicide by drowning in a vat of Dos Equis because they can't agree which vehicle to drive to the wedding of their non-partisan friend Joshua.As we see in patterns of baby names, liberal elites use esoteric cultural references to demonstrate their elevated social position just as conservatives invoke traditional signals of wealth and affluence. Instead of divides between “Red and Blue states,” it is more accurate to say that America is divided not just by “Red and Blue elites,” but also in the ways these elites seek to differentiate themselves from the largely “purple” masses.
In general, Rand deserves her followers, while Lewis emphatically does not deserve his. (I can just imagine Lewis’s reaction had he lived to see Ollie North (!) living in a mansion called “Narnia.”) Lewis was a superb writer of persuasive prose (I’d put him in the Orwell class) and, on average, a far clearer and more original thinker than Rand, whose “philosophy” is mostly Nietzsche-and-water. You don’t have to be a Christian to admire the brilliance of Screwtape, or its insight into some aspects of moral psychology and of bureaucratic life.
Then, as now, it comes down to character—from Lucy Ricardo and Archie Bunker to Andy Griffith and Andy Sipowicz. There are kinships across generations—from The Honeymooners to Roseanne, say, or from The Twilight Zone to Lost. Regardless of the year, or genre, what emerges is a common dynamic between show and audience, the kind of lasting intimacy that writers telling episodic stories are uniquely able to achieve.As a teacher, I agree with Brownfield's sentiments, but I'm not sure the programs were listed in order of the best character development. That quibble doesn't really matter. Lists like these aren't about the best series or the best characters. These lists exist for a single purpose: people like me get to argue about slights and irrational high ranks.
So, to review: DNA testing does not even begin until after arraignment and bail decisions are already made. The samples sit in storage for months, and take weeks to test. When they are tested, they are checked against the Unsolved Crimes Collection—rather than the Convict and Arrestee Collection, which could be used to identify them.The Act forbids the Court’s purpose (identification), but prescribes as its purpose what our suspicionless-search cases forbid (“official investigation into a crime”). Against all of that, it is safe to say that if the Court’s identification theory is not wrong, there is no such thing as error. . .
The Court disguises the vast (and scary) scope of its holding by promising a limitation it cannot deliver. The Court repeatedly says that DNA testing, and entry into a national DNA registry, will not befall thee and me, dear reader, but only those arrested for “serious offense[s].” Ante, at 28; see also ante, at 1, 9, 14, 17, 22, 23, 24 (repeatedly limiting the analysis to “serious offenses”). I cannot imagine what principle could possibly justify this limitation, and the Court does not attempt to suggest any. If one believes that DNA will “identify” someone arrested for assault, he must believe that it will “identify” someone arrested for a traffic offense. This Court does not base its judgments on senseless distinctions. At the end of the day, logic will out. When there comes before us the taking of DNA from an arrestee for a traffic violation, the Court will predictably (and quite rightly) say, “We can find no significant difference between this case and King.” Make no mistake about it: As an entirely predictable consequence of today’s decision, your DNA can be taken and entered into a national DNA database if you are ever arrested, rightly or wrongly, and for whatever reason. . . .
Today’s judgment will, to be sure, have the beneficial effect of solving more crimes; then again, so would the taking of DNA samples from anyone who flies on an airplane (surely the Transportation Security Administration needs to know the “identity” of the flying public), applies for a driver’s license, or attends a public school. Perhaps the construction of such a genetic panopticon is wise. But I doubt that the proud men who wrote the charter of our liberties would have been so eager to open their mouths for royal inspection.
I therefore dissent, and hope that today’s incursion upon the Fourth Amendment, like an earlier one, will some day be repudiated. [Emphasis Mine]Suffice it to say, this decision needs to be overturned as quickly as possible. I still marvel at the fact that people scream bloody murder at any perceived abridgment of Second Amendment protections but are silent at real abridgments of Fourth Amendment rights.
Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.), the chair of the NRSC, all but endorsed the GOP establishment favorites running for open Senate seats next year in West Virginia and South Dakota.
In an interview Sunday on C-SPAN’s “Newsmakers,” Moran said he had “great confidence and faith” in Rep. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W. Va.) and former South Dakota Gov. Mike Rounds, the Republican front-runners to capture seats held by a pair of retiring Democrats.
“She seems to be clearly on her way to being nominated as the Republican candidate in West Virginia,” the campaign committee chairman said of Capito, calling her “a great House member.” Moran was nearly as effusive in praising Rounds, describing the former two-term governor as an “outstanding candidate.”
Capito and Rounds have drawn criticism from conservatives, including the Club for Growth, for their fiscal records but have not yet been met with daunting primary challengers. Moran’s comments suggest Senate Republicans would prefer to keep it that way.It will be interesting to see how the Republican right wing deals with this pseudo endorsement. I'm guessing loudly and unhappily.
1 And as Jesus passed by, he saw a man which was blind from his birth.
2 And his disciples asked him, saying, Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind?
3 Jesus answered, Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him.
4 I must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day: the night cometh, when no man can work.
5 As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.
6 When he had thus spoken, he spat on the ground, and made clay of the spittle, and he anointed the eyes of the blind man with the clay,
7 And said unto him, Go, wash in the pool of Siloam, (which is by interpretation, Sent.) He went his way therefore, and washed, and came seeing.
An innocent ad for heart-healthy Cheerios has sparked an onslaught of disturbing racist backlash on the Internet.
The cereal brand was forced to pull comments from its YouTube page after a cereal commercial featuring an interracial family reportedly prompted a string of messages about Nazis, racial genocide and viewers so disgusted they “want to vomit.”Adweek adds some perspective:
It's another one of those things that shouldn't be a story but is—an ad from a major U.S. brand featuring an interracial couple and their daughter. You'd think this new Cheerios ad from Saatchi & Saatchi in New York might go largely unnoticed, given the plethora of interracial couples on TV shows these days. (NBC's Parenthood is a notable example, though far from the only one.) But it's not going unnoticed—it hit Reddit's front page, a place largely reserved for life's great oddities, and the YouTube view count is rising fast. The problem is that TV ads have always lagged TV programming in this regard, as so many brands are clearly scared of being perceived as making a political statement with the casting of their commercials. Thus, the Cheerios ad, despite its characters being representative of tens of thousands of actual couples in America, sticks out like a sore thumb. And then you have the YouTube comments section, which predictably has devolved into an endless flame war, with references to Nazis, "troglodytes" and "racial genocide." At what point will an ad like this just seem normal?When I got the link to put the YouTube clip in this post, I noticed that 1153 people disliked the ad. I wonder was Brad Ford one of them?
