AP:
Personal Web Surfing Can Benefit Workers. Whew!
Wow, free Movable Type hosting.
Finally! I found out the Emacs equivalent to Pico's Control-J justify
command. It's Meta-q (fill-paragraph). See
Explicit Fill
Commands for more info.
California (well, one town anyway) just elected a new reason to be
nationally mocked. The small town of Bolinas passed a resolution
which states (in its entirety): "Vote for Bolinas to be a socially
acknowledged nature-loving town because to like to drink the water out
of the lakes to like to eat the blueberries to like the bears is not
hatred to hotels and motor boats. Dakar. Temporary and way to save
life, skunks and foxes (airplanes to go over the ocean) and to make it
beautiful." (via Michael D's Daily Kos diary).
At last night's
Rock
the Vote debate, Howard Dean got his ass kicked trying to respond to
criticism of his statements that he wants the votes of people with
Confederate flags on their pickup trucks. As a Dean supporter, it was
really disappointing to see his performance, because I believe the point
he's trying to make -- when not distorted by the PC police -- is right on.
A lot of poor white people in the South (not to mention the rest of the
country) are voting against their interests, divided by emphasis on
symbols, "gays, guns, God, and the Flag". To win, Democrats need to reach
these people and get them to vote for them.
But Dean did not articulate that point well, and in the process, managed
to offend blacks and Southerners at the same time! This is doubly
disappointing for me because Dean is consistently not doing as well as he
should be in the debates. He should've been ready for this, and he wasn't.
If he doesn't get better in the debate format, how is he going to defeat
Bush one-on-one?
Below is a summary of commentary on the flag issue.
Jack Balkin:
Dean and the Guys with the Confederate Flag on their Pickup Trucks. "I
would rather that the Democratic party be more populist than it currently
is. Let me be clear: I don't particularly like Dean's way of exemplifying
the working class Americans he wants to appeal to: the Confederate Flag,
after all, reemerged into popular consciousness as a symbol of massive
resistance to Brown in the 1950's and 1960's. But I do think that it is
important to show people who have a gun rack on their pickup trucks-- to
change the metaphor-- that the Democratic Party is working in their
interests."
Dan Conley: Rock the Vote.
"But no one's claiming Dean's a bigot, we're claiming he's an arrogant ...
I don't want to say it but it rhymes with trick."
Hesiod:
Block the Vote. "It's time for the Democrats to stop Howard Dean."
jgkojak, Daily Kos: Debate
comments/flag flap. "Howard Dean has had his sister souljah moment- and
then some."
LiberalOasis: Dean
Can Stop Dean (after yesterday's
Can Anyone Stop
Dean?) "Oops. Less than 24 hours after LiberalOasis said Howard Dean was
'barely scraped' by the confederate flag flap, he got pummeled by it."
Nathan Newman:
Dean and
Confederate Flag. "This is not an argument for pandering to racism; it's
an argument that if poor white voters aren't given a real economic
alternative, they'll retreat to frustrated scapegoating."
John Nichols, Capital Times:
Rebel
flag flap shows media failure. "What isn't being reported is this
reality: Every single presidential candidate who is now expressing concern
about Dean's remark has sat in meetings where political operatives,
pollsters and consultants have discussed strategies for winning the votes
of white working-class males. These voters, whose economic interests would
be at least somewhat better served by Democratic policies but who tend to
vote Republican for social and cultural reasons, have fueled the rise of
the GOP in recent years. And Democrats are obsessed with figuring out how
to reach them."
William Satelan, Slate: Confederate
Flog. "The headline coming out of this debate is the pounding Howard Dean
took for saying he wants the votes of guys whose trucks sport Confederate
flags. It's a bum rap."
Emory Walker, Daily Kos:
The High Road To
Dixie. "I lived in Louisiana, Mississippi, Georgia, and Tennessee for
more than 20 years, including all of my childhood prior to high school.
The notion that confederate flag-bearing, gun-toting truck drivers make up
the better part of that population is nonsense--the kind only a
carpetbagging yankee could conjure. That is why that phraseology will
ultimately come back to haunt Dr. Dean. There is a New South, and it
looks nothing like cotton plantations and tent revivals."
Joan Walsh, Salon:
Confederacy of dunces. "Howard Dean's Democratic rivals are willfully
misrepresenting the candidate's reference to the Stars and Bars -- and
writing off the pickup-truck vote."