A vote for Charlie Christ is a vote for Marco Rubio. So vote for Kendrick Meek.
Month: August 2010
Mac McClelland
Mac is the amazing Mother Jones reporter who was the only person reporting the real news from the Gulf oil spill, and here she is speaking at the Rising Tides conference in New Orleans (h/t First Draft).
Pay close attention to what she says when asked if the seafood is safe to eat — and btw, the language is not suitable for work!
Rising Tide V: Keynote by Mother Jones reporter Mac McClelland (28 Aug 2010 NOLA) from Sophielab on Vimeo.
Recall
Bugged
What Happens
When a guy dressed as a pregnant demon and carrying a sign that says “I want a sandwich” goes to the Glenn Beck rally? Go read!
Clittens Need Homes
Steveeboy’s feral kittens are now almost cats, and they need homes. And one of them is already a proven mouser! So if you’re in the Philly area and interested, contact me:
Maggots, Manure and Rats, Oh My!
Hey, wouldn’t it be cool if there was some kind of government agency that would inspect food plants and make sure they were clean? Just kidding!
Two Iowa farms that produced more than half a billion eggs linked to a salmonella outbreak failed to “fully implement” plans to prevent contamination, US regulators say. Wright County Egg and Hillandale Farms of Iowa failed to adequately prevent sanitation problems associated with rodents, maggots and manure, the Food and Drug Administration said today in reports on its website.
This month’s recall, which has sickened as many as 1470 people in the US, may be the biggest withdrawal of salmonella-tainted eggs from the market in at least eight to 10 years, Jeffrey Farrar, the Food and Drug Administration’s associate commissioner for food protection, said recently.
Wright, based in Galt, Iowa, has recalled 380 million eggs since August 13. Another 170 million eggs were pulled from the market August 19 by Hillandale Farms, based in New Hampton, Iowa, bringing the total to 550 million.
Some poultry-house doors at the Wright farm were “pushed out by the weight of manure, which was piled in some cases four to eight feet high,” David Elder, director of FDA’s Office of Regional Operations, said today. “Live and dead maggots too numerous to count” and “excessive amounts of manure” were among the problems FDA inspectors found at the Wright farm, according to one of the reports. “Unsealed rodent holes” and “uncaged hens tracking manure” were found at Hillandale Farms, according to the other report.
Return of the Bitch-Slap Theory
Of course, I really wish Olliver Willis had been right. If Obama had been able to cooly stand his ground and stare down the crazy Republicans like they were a pack of gutless 6-year olds, or like they were the lumberjack in “The Reverend Mr. Black,” nothing would have pleased me more.
But it was never in the cards. Obama had run on compromise as a principle. And compromise is not a principle. Compromise is what happens to principle when you don’t have any. And Republicans know that. Because they don’t have any principles, either–but in an entire different sort of way.
Which is why Republicans just kept hitting Obama over, and over, and over again, regardless of whatever else was going on. The only reality for them, 24/7, was attacking Obama. Did the economy need to be destroyed in order to take him down? Fine, they were dedicated to destroying the economy–and we’re secretly thankful that he’d done so much to help them on that score. Did the unemployed need to starve in order to take Obama down? Fine, they would starve. Would a terrorist attack undo his Presidency? They were not-so-secretly rooting for the terrorists.
This past weekend should have represented a sort of nadir for the Republicans. The Beckathon was an incoherent joke. Beck himself seemed totally incapable of communicating anything coherent. Anything, that is, except incoherent rage. And that, of course, was all that was needed.
What Obama really doesn’t seem to get–just like Carter, just like Dukakis, just like Gore, just like Kerry, is no one really cares how smart you are. In fact, on average, they’ll hold it against you. But if things really go bad when you’re around–or even anywhere close–then they will turn on you with a purple fury. Because, God damn it, you’re smart, and you should have seen it coming and done something about it.
And you know what?
They’re right.
Even if the Republicans are bitch-slap insane.
You know, he’s right. It’s really infuriating to watch him just take it when a couple of well-crafted sentences could take them down. But as I pointed out before, this is a hard-core personality issue — and someone has to be at a major crossroads in his or her life before they can change something that’s so deeply wired into them.
The Backlash
Will Bunch’s new book is out today, and I highly recommend it. (And yes, I’m one of the people he thanks in the book. But I like the book anyway!)
Will is a really good reporter — and I mean that as the highest compliment. His real strength is the ability to keep digging deeper, without losing sight of the humanity of his subjects. What I love about this book is how well he unravels the thinking of the right wing and the newly-minted Tea Partiers. As I said before, it’s almost like reading a good detective novel.
You can order it here. Or you can read an excerpt in today’s Salon here.