DAYLEE PICTURE: Old Hill Street Station in Singapore. From National Geographic.
CIA Admits It Was Behind Iran's Coup (Malcolm Byrne) from Foreign Policy Magazine
"The agency finally owns up to its role in the 1953 operation."
Pushback Against Safety Net Cuts During August Recess (George Zornick) from the Nation
"This opposition to cutting Social Security—and the push to actually expand it—is operating on a pretty slow burn during this annual Congressional recess. The question is how much heat concerned citizens and activists can bring to DC when it’s dealmaking time in the fall."
Judge Blocks Pennsylvania Voter ID Enforcement, Again (Adam B) from Daily Kos
"Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court Judge Bernard McGinley today entered a preliminary injunction barring election officials from requiring Pennsylvania voters to present photo ID at this November's elections, now the fourth straight election for which the law has been placed on hold."
Why GOP Pitch to 'Missing' White Voters Will Likely Fail (Ruy Teixeira) from the Democratic Strategist
"White voters are likely to become less, not more, conservative over time, presenting a huge obstacle to this ever-increasing white Republican vote strategy. Start with the white working class. ... white working class voters are declining precipitously as a share of voters (down from 54 to 36 percent between 1988 and 2012) while white college graduates are increasing their share (from 31 to 36 percent over the same time period)."
One Reform, Indivisible (Paul Krugman) from the New York Times
"On the unstoppability of Obamacare: We have this system in which Congress passes laws, the president signs them, and then they go into effect. The Affordable Care Act went through this process, and there is no legitimate way for Republicans to stop it. ... their rudest shock is yet to come. You see, this thing isn’t going to be the often-predicted “train wreck.” On the contrary, it’s going to work."
Conservatives Say Grassroots Support Building for ObamaCare Shutdown (Erik Wasson and Elise Viebeck) from The Hill
"House conservatives say grassroots support is building for their effort to risk a government shutdown to defund ObamaCare. Conservatives who back the strategy said their spines have been stiffened by support at town-hall meetings."
Was Obama Rodeo Mask Just a Case of Clowning Around? (Kathleen Parker) from the Washington Post
"Question: If a black person wears a George W. Bush mask, is he racist? The next logical question answers the first: What if the clown wears a Bush mask at an event attended primarily by blacks and invites the crowd to cheer for the bulls? This unlikely event would feel offensive for the same reasons the recent clown event did. The Missouri rodeo audience was mostly white and the masked man in the ring was depicting a black man. This changes everything we think about humor, about clowns and about good old-fashioned fun."
GOP Elites in Full Blown Panic (Greg Sargent) from the Washington Post
"Republicans are in jeopardy of convincing voters they cannot govern, as top GOPers seem to fear, it’s not clear that this is only because a shutdown has become a real possibility. A shutdown, because of its visibility and destructiveness, is obviously a glaring symbol of an inability to govern, one that voters (as the 1990s showed) easily understand in such terms."
A Terrifying Look into John Boehner’s Awful Job (Ezra Klein) from the Washington Post
"Costa identifies two strategies Boehner and Cantor employed: One was patient, delicate diplomacy with the GOP’s right flank. The other was reckless, ridiculous promises they’ll never be able to deliver on. Both come with huge costs."
The GOP Stares Into The Abyss (Andrew Sullivan) from The Dish
"At some point, if an actual party keeps supporting ever-more-extreme policies and ever-more-harsh rhetoric, it will pay a price in popularity and elections. It’s the kind of price that is not paid in one news cycle – in fact, the news cycle mentality can even keep the show on the road for a while. ... But as these incidents accumulate and feed off each other, general impressions are formed by the intermittently interested general public. And they are not good."
If The GOP Risks Default Over Obamacare, The President Should Remember What Bill Clinton Said (Jason Sattler) from the National Memo
"The serious threat of default is a cudgel that no political party has ever used so brazenly before. If the GOP is going to wield it again and again knowing that what they’re demanding is unreasonable, President Obama should just say, “the Constitution requires me to pay the bills Congress racked up, and I intend to pay them.”"
Can a Republican Win 270 Electoral Votes in 2016...or Ever? (Myra Adams) from the Daily Beast
"As a conservative here is what I know: The GOP’s 2016 presidential nominee will be more conservative than ever, and have a heck of a time winning the Electoral College."
The Past’s Future Republican (Frank Bruni) from the New York Times
"... if Republicans care about safeguarding their future, their wisest and best bet may be to reach back into their past. In a pack not exactly brimming with moderate, sensitive voices, Bush’s stands out as less strident, more reasonable and more forward-looking than his potential rivals’."
Senate Conservatives Fund To Make McConnell ‘Feel The Heat’ In KY Campaign from Talking Points Memo
"On Friday, a leading tea party-aligned group previously associated with Jim DeMint announced they were planning a "statewide media campaign in Kentucky" to make McConnell "feel the heat" and support a conservative effort to defund Obamacare."
That's right -- spend BIG on defeating people like Mitch McConnell!!
Russell Moore: From Moral Majority to 'Prophetic Minority' (Naomi Schaefer Riley) from the Wall Street Journal
"The new leader of the Southern Baptist political arm says Christians have lost the culture and need to act accordingly. ... The easy days of mobilizing a ready-made majority are gone. By "prophetic minority," he means that Christians must return to the days when they were a moral example and vanguard—defenders of belief in a larger unbelieving culture. He views this less as a defeat than as an opportunity."
New Package, Same Fox: Ailes Courts the Non-Elderly (Jordon Chariton) from Salon
"Millennials reject the network's anti-Obama focus -- leaving Roger Ailes with an aging audience and big trouble. ... Roger Ailes will eventually be met with a monumental decision: change his network’s DNA to a more moderate version to stave it off from extinction, or ride out into the sunset with the older folks that got him to No. 1 in the first place."
COMIC BOOK NUGGET!!
Superhero Smackdown: Who Would Win in a Fight: Marvel or DC? (Douglas Wolk) from Slate
"As with those two crime fighters, DC and Marvel are both colorful public fronts with staggering amounts of corporate cash and power behind them: DC Entertainment is owned by Time Warner, and Marvel Entertainment is part of the Walt Disney Company. That’s where the similarities end."
DOCUMENTARY NUGGET!!
Are You White? Then You Should Probably Watch This (Aisha Harris) from Slate
"In this new film, he attempts to address a few very complex questions about race and ethnicity, while featuring interviews with notable scholars including Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, and Harvard Law professor Charles Ogletree. Interspersed throughout are candid comments from white students discussing their views on affirmative action and whiteness. The film poses some big questions: “What does it mean to be white?” “Isn’t racism a thing of the past?” “What about us?” “Shouldn’t we be colorblind?”"
No comments:
Post a Comment