July 2011
Why Now Is a Horrible Time To Be a Graduate... →
It is striking how often the word “love” is used by defenders of the current job system in academe; they would never use the word in their serious work. There is a double-consciousness about graduate school in the humanities. We often pretend that it is a continuation of the undergraduate, liberal-arts experience when it is really — like law school and medical school —...
Conservatives angry over Pell Grant funding in... →
sageoflogic:
what-marvelous-things:
sageoflogic:
thehumorlessfeminist:
House conservatives who have stalled legislation to raise the national debt limit are angry that it includes $17 billion in supplemental spending for Pell Grants, which some compare to welfare.
“So you can go to college on Pell Grants — maybe I should not be telling anybody this because it’s turning out to be the...
Platinum Coin Solution to Debt Crisis →
I keep hesitating to write about this because it sounds insane, but Jack Balkin’s a professor at Yale Law School so I’ll let him say it:
Sovereign governments such as the United States can print new money. However, there’s a statutory limit to the amount of paper currency that can be in circulation at any one time. Ironically, there’s no similar limit on the amount of coinage. A little-known...
“Instead, Bush picked Henry Kissinger. You can tell someone wants to get the...”
– Al Franken on George Bush picking Henry Kissinger to lead the 9/11 Commission
Al Franken is one of two points of sanity in the Senate.
House Voting on Naming Post Offices, As Opposed to... →
Despite what some government officials have billed as a possible financial Armageddon looming four days away and with no viable deal yet reached to raise the debt ceiling, lawmakers took a break from the debt debate Thursday night.
What did they turn to? Post offices.
Eight post office naming bills came to the House floor just two days after the U.S. Postal Service announced its plans...
Experts Exclude Man As Killer, Execution Set... →
kohenari:
Texas has set August 18 as the execution date for Larry Swearingen. Swearingen was sentenced to death for the murder of Melissa Trotter, but he had been in jail for 23 days when the body of the victim was found. Five separate forensic experts, including four current or former Chief Medical Examiners from Texas, have determined that Melissa Trotter died very close to the date her...
The best non-Onion headline you'll see all day:... →
paxamericana:
The ancient Aztecs believed that the moon was the severed head of the goddess Coyolxauhqui. According to legend, the deity led an attack on her pregnant mother, Coatlicue, only to be confronted by Huitzilopochtli, who sprang fully armored from Coatlicue’s womb, decapitated his half-sister, and threw her head into the night sky.
Apparently, this legend is just about on par...
Maschinenmensch: Israel learns of a hidden shame... →
shamostan:
“For 54 years the fate of a young Bedouin girl who disappeared in the Negev desert was relegated to rumour and a single entry in the diary of David Ben-Gurion, the prime minister of the fledgling Israeli state.
“It was decided and carried out: they washed her, cut her hair,…
Watchmohandasgandhi:
kateoplis:
Jon Stewart Blasts Fox News For Playing The Victim Card Through Nonstop Liberal-Bashing | Mediaite
This is completely AWESOME! (via: brooklynmutt)
“That is some of the most free-range, organically-grown, disingenuous, ideologically marinated un-self-awareness I’ve ever seen in the wild.”
Jon at his best.
Wow, this was actually pretty good.
This was so...
I’ve had a certain amount of schadenfreude this past week watching Fox News desperately trying to spin the Oslo shooters as not Christian because there is nothing Christian about his actions. THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT MUSLIMS HAVE BEEN SAYING FOR YEARS ABOUT ISLAM!
“The battle under way in America is not between religion and science. It is not...”
– Chris Hedges (via personalinfamy)
this. x10,000 this
(via akagoldfish)
Sometimes I think I should just rename my blog Fear and Orientalism because that’s half of what I post about.
4 tags
FBI PowerPoint on Islam is (Unsurprisingly) Racist... →
Among the most provocative aspects of the presentation is its recommended reading list. One book offered is The Truth About Mohammed: Founder of the World’s Most Intolerant Religion, by Robert Spencer. Spencer is one of the ringleaders of the protest against the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque” and the co-founder of Stop the Islamicization of America, which “promotes a conspiratorial...
“CFNS claims to have a list of 6,000 members of the Muslim Brotherhood who are...”
– Our own Tim Murphy reports on Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.) and his crazy jihad on jihad.
We just keep going back to that word: penetrate. Where’s Edward Said when you need him?
(via motherjones)
I wish Edward Said was still around to discuss Bernard Lewis talking about Muslim sex practices. I think...
“Why choose basketball? Well, for one thing, it’s the only sport where you...”
– King of the Hill
Everything About the War in Afghanistan in a...
motherjones:
From CNN:
Army Master Sgt. Benjamin A. Stevenson, 36, was on his tenth tour of duty in the war zones of Afghanistan and Iraq when he was killed Thursday in a remote area of eastern Afghanistan.
Via Joshua Foust at Registan.net.
3 tags
“I’m pleased by the steps Rami Levi has taken. The Arabs don’t particularly like...”
– Racist Rabbi in Israel delighted that a supermarket chain is keeping its Palestinian and Israeli employees separate so they won’t fraternize.
Whenever someone says Israel is the only democratic state in the Middle East, I just laugh because of stuff like this.
“Clearly, the US prison system is riddled with racism and classism, but it gets...”
– Prisoners - The New Slave Labor
If you are interested in finding how fucked up our prison system is and why Texas is responsible for a large portion of the problem, read Texas Tough.
I'm the same as I was when I was six years-old.: I... →
frombaghdadwithlove:
ceasesilence:
rawkabilly:
aaron-in-transit:
Apparently my supervisor and coworkers were fine with it, but the HR representative, who I never even got to meet, was not.
They first had the person from my staffing agency contact me (instead of speaking to me personally) …
This is repulsive.
Line By Line Refutation of Boehner's Speech Last... →
“To have to taste food like that in this point in the competition… is...”
– A Judge on MasterChef taking himself way too seriously.
Tim DeChristopher Sentenced to 2 Years in Jail for... →
“Federal prosecutors had sought a stiff sentence and objected to a U.S. Probation Office report that recommended a sentence less than the 10-year maximum. They contended the report underestimates the harm caused when DeChristopher ran up the price of the parcels, pushing the bids beyond the reach of other buyers in December 2008.
He ended up with $1.7 million in leases on 22,500...
Rick Perry Leads Romney on Trading Sites →
Honestly, if Perry gets the presidency, I’m leaning towards leaving the US. The guy executed an innocent man. He’s like Bush without the morality.
“The plan is, thus, tantamount to a form of “class warfare.” If enacted, it could...”
– Center on Budget and Policy Priorities analysis on Speaker Boehner’s Plan
Note how Boehner never addressed why a student should pay more for schooling while a hedge fund manager shouldn’t pay more in taxes.
Charlie Brooker on "Experts" in Media Blaming... →
This describes so well what’s wrong with our media. People desperately want to cover breaking news and they rely on the worst possible kind of expert: someone with a breadth of knowledge but no depth who can speak only in cliches that the Powers that Be find useful.
(That sounded way more conspiratorial than I meant it to.)
Bryan Fischer of American Family Association (and... →
Fischer is a pig.
paxamericana:
“In today’s column, the American Family Association’s Bryan Fischer says that after reading Norway terrorist Anders Behring Breivik’s manifesto, he concluded that Breivik’s “analysis of cultural trends in Europe and the danger created by Islamic immigration and inflitration [sic] is accurate,” adding that he strongly disagrees with Breivik’s violent means even...
Fox News Continues to Obfuscate Right Wing Beliefs... →
“By now, there’s no question in anyone’s mind that the tragic Norway shootings are the work of a right-wing extremist who appears to at least have been influenced by web sites like StormFront.org, among others. But watch these Fox talkers avoid it completely, even in the beginning, where they open up by asking if this can “really be compared to the Oklahoma City...
First Ever Audit of the Federal Reserve!!! Oh... →
logicallypositive:
thoseboringpolitics:
What was revealed in the audit was startling: $16,000,000,000,000.00 had been secretly given out to US banks and corporations and foreign banks everywhere from France to Scotland. From the period between December 2007 and June 2010, the Federal Reserve had secretly bailed out many of the world’s banks, corporations, and governments. The Federal Reserve...
“I am not going to make a deal with someone who is more concerned with his...”
– John Boehner on the debt ceiling talks.
It’s a bit rich coming from a guy who has publicly said his major goal is making sure Obama is not re-elected and who until last week was talking about how irresponsible it was to do a short term deal.
4 tags
High School Wouldn't Let Black Student Be... →
Wow, just wow. She had a higher GPA, even while being a teenage mother, but the school appointed a white co-valedictorian, even though she had a lower GPA. Then, they wouldn’t even let her protest it at the school board.
Airlines Raise Rates to Cover Lost Taxes, Instead... →
You know the drill. If you cut taxes on industry X, they’ll “pass the savings on” to consumers! Yay!
Only they don’t. Not to put too fine a point on it, but it’s because Republican theories on everything, including taxes, are stupid bullshit and everyone in the world knows it. Laura Clawson knew it. Second jen knew it.
If you didn’t, you do now:
Airlines...
“It feels, you know, weird. Very weird. The idea that with all these things that...”
– Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, pondering how weird it is that his firm was vilified after the financial crisis. (via officialssay)
Breivik Wanted to Work with Al Qaeda to Get...
Reading over his insane manifesto, he describes partnering with Al Qaeda to get bombs to use against “concentrations of category A and B traitors.” To prove to al Qaeda he was reliable, he proposed future militants either cut off their genitalia (WTF?) or execute a large number of civilian children.
“It’s the destructive and suicidal “Sex and the City” lifestyle (modern feminism,...”
– Anders Breivik
Of course he is a rabid misogynist. Still, this quote could just as easily come from Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity.
Since Norway Massacre, Four Mass Shootings in US →
I knew of one of these and I’m pretty plugged into the news. It just shows how violent American society is in general. I live in Texas, like guns, and still support gun control.
“If there is anyone in the universe who should think twice before criticizing a...”
– John Yoo talking some bullshit about freedom of speech
Scott Walker Passes Law Requiring Voter IDs, Then... →
