Politics and Culture Reads around the Web 10/26/2008

• The Last Lynching: Ted Koppel documentary on Discovery tonight – Boing Boing

  tags: racism, usa, culture, video

• Zakaria: U.S. has itself to blame for financial crisis – CNN.com

  tags: usa, economy, culture, capitalism, history, politics

  • CNN: What do you think caused this crisis?

    Don’t Miss

    • Zakaria’s new book
    • ‘Fareed Zakaria: GPS’

    Zakaria: We did, all of us. Since the 1980s, Americans have consumed more than they produced, and they have made up the difference by borrowing. Not only on the personal consumer level but in how our government runs.

    Every city, every county and every state has wanted to preserve its many and proliferating operations and yet not raise taxes. How to do that? By borrowing, using ever more elaborate financial instruments.

    Easy money plus leverage equals financial crisis.

    CNN: OK. So what do we do now?

    Zakaria: In the short term, all the solutions require that governments take on more debts and larger obligations. This is inevitable and necessary. But that doesn’t mean we should, as some noted economists advocate, stimulate the economy with more tax cuts.

    That would be only one more way to keep the party going artificially, like asking a drunk to go to AA next year but in the meantime to have even more whiskey.

    A far better stimulus would be to announce and expedite major infrastructure and energy projects, which are investments, not consumption, and therefore have a much different effect on the country’s fiscal fortunes.

• supercres.net » Strategy, tactic, or crazy?

  tags: no_tag

  • It should be noted: “Ashley Todd” is an anagram for “Shoddy Tale“.

• Wonkette: The D.C. Gossip » Blog Archive » A Children’s Treasury of Wingnut Reactions to Cut-Nut Ashley Todd Confessing Her Racist Fantasy

  An hilarious (and scary) collection of right-wing reactions to the HOAX exposed.

  The comments thread to this wingnut miscellany is hilarious too. Read it all for a good laugh.

  tags: hoax, elections08, culture, usa, conservative

  • Let us go where we always go during our Times of National Crisis: to the wingnut comments of our nation’s proud conservative blogs. These people were obviously very angry last night about how this Negroid Monster Obama Staffer nearly murdered the brave 20-year-old white gal from Texas who was working the McCain phone banks in Pittsburgh and only wanted to drive around the scary “Little Italy” neighborhood looking for an ATM but instead drove right to the very heart of the Obama movement, which is a crackhouse full of 15-feet-tall Kenyan monsters who hunt this wretched ghetto looking for McCain bumper stickers, so they can lightly scratch their symbol, a backwards letter “B,” on the cheeks of their Twittering victims.

    So, as you maybe heard already, bitchy made it all up. It was just a desperate true believer/campaign worker for McCain/Palin deciding that a race-baiting frenzy might just “turn the corner” for Walnuts. And, now, the wingnuts are a bit disappointed.

• Tony Burman: Shocking Racism at Palin Rally: Al Jazeera Report Starts Controversy

  Interesting. AL JAZEERA ENGLISH CANNOT BE SEEN ON AMERICAN TV.

  Why? (And if you answer, please also tell me if you have watched it – if yes, for how many hours, and what did you think; and if no, why not?)

  David Frost and many other world-class journalists work for it.

  Seems a clear-cut case of AMERICAN PREJUDICE, doesn’t it?

  tags: censorship, capitalism, ideology, media, medialiteracy, democracy

  • It’s true — the way that the U.S. is portrayed on Al Jazeera matters, and we take that responsibility very seriously. We followed up the initial piece by sending the reporter to get reaction from African-American Obama supporters. We gave the last word in this saga to the owner of a PR firm in Atlanta:

    “They are not America. They don’t reflect America, they don’t represent the America that I live in and am a part of, and they don’t reflect the majority of Americans.”

    We will have to wait until November 4 — or the early hours of November 5 — to know who Americans will choose to be their next President. But there are certain things we do know now.

    After the dark and gloomy years of recent times, this race has electrified the world. It’s a U.S. election that has more international resonance that perhaps any in our lifetime.

    And all of these issues have been debated and explored in hundreds of hours of coverage on Al Jazeera English, an award-winning channel that is broadcast in more than 100 countries.

    Except for most of the United States. Political and financial interests have pressured American cable companies from carrying Al Jazeera English.

    In a country that regards itself as the world’s leading democracy, that is regrettable because Al Jazeera’s coverage has been fair, comprehensive and respectful of different points of view. And a window on the world.

    As the world welcomes this new and exciting U.S. era, isn’t it time for Americans — when it comes to being able to see Al Jazeera – to actually be allowed to make their own judgment?

• Huffington Post Still Blowing Doors Off – Annotated

  tags: no_tag

  • 
    • Interesting to see the rates of growth of these blogs over 12 months ago. TPM must be doing something right!

      And NOTE: This is a GOOD, BI-PARTISAN LIST OF POLITICAL BLOGS for the CLASSROOM. – post by cburell

• Palin Popularity Plummets as Controversy Drags on McCain Ticket

  This article is most interesting in its breakdown of the voter out-reach strategies, demographically, of the two campaigns. Obama has more money, which is obviously helpful, but he also seems to have a more sophisticated game plan. Campaign management must be intensely interesting, like coaching a football team. The playbook angle.

  tags: elections08

• InternetNews Realtime IT News – Ohio Election Site Back up Amid Fraud Fights

  Real politics in Ohio. At stake: 200,000 votes in one district alone.

  tags: elections08, democracy

• Scott Swenson: (Watch) Brian Williams Ask McCain-Palin if Abortion Clinic Bombers are Terrorists Like Ayers – Annotated

  tags: no_tag

  • NBC’s Brian Williams asked Sen. McCain and Gov. Palin about their attacks on Sen. Barack Obama and his association with Bill Ayers, and if they would define abortion clinic bombers as domestic terrorists.

    Palin said she wouldn’t condone such actions and ultimately worked her way to saying that “terrorist” would be defined as anyone who seeks to destroy innocent Americans, meaning that she seems to agree that abortion clinic bombers are terrorists. McCain felt the need to to clean up the answer later in the interview saying that anyone who breaks the law, including bombing an abortion clinic, should be punished to the full extent of the law.

    • Good for Brian Williams for asking the obvious. – post by cburell
  • McCain has previously said he was “proud of everyone attending our rallies” which includes Paul Schenck who has been linked to numerous acts of violence, including the murder of Dr. Barnett Slepian. Former Republican Congressman and host of MSNBC’s Morning Joe has regularly suggested the media discuss Ayers more, but has yet to raise the McCain-Palin links to these un-repetent domestic terrorists. Schenck was recently given VIP passes to a McCain-Palin rally.
    • NOTEWORTHY. If Obama’s campaign knew this, that means they truly creditied the electorate with being able to take the high road with him, while the McCain campaign made a mockery of itself by flogging the Ayers story.

      And they were right. The electorate is wonderfully above negative campaigning this election, overall. – post by cburell

  • Later in the interview in a discussion of elites, McCain defines an elite as someone who “thinks they can dictate to America what they believe, instead of letting Americans decide for themselves.” That seems to make the McCain-Palin views on a woman’s right to make her own health care decisions, “elitist”.
    • The logic of this ticket is as shootable as fish nailed to the wall at point blank range, but this is still a GOOD POINT. – post by cburell

  • In the same interview Palin was asked if she is a feminist, and again dodged the question preferring not to associate herself with “labels” even though she is a member of Feminists for Life.

    
     

• McCain camp defends Palin in wardrobe flap | Politics | Reuters

  Classic Red Herring: We screwed up, but the media is the real problem.

  tags: elections08, politics, rhetoric

  • Wallace said the media storm about Palin’s wardrobe was a terrible disservice to her and said there seemed to be a “double-standard for women in politics.”

    “That any aspect of her shoes, clothes or appearance has become a distraction is a terrible commentary on the state of the media and politics. Let’s get on with our great debate about the best direction for the country in these challenging times for our economy and our nation’s security,” she said.

• How Safe Is This Election? | Election 2008 | AlterNet

  EXCELLENT, in-depth analysis of all the ways that democracy can be sabotaged through modern vote suppression in America.

  GREAT CLASSROOM RESOURCE.

  tags: democracy, elections08, history, usa

  • Some Republican-run states, most notably Florida, have introduced absurdly strict standards for the admission of new voters to the rolls, making it likely that thousands, if not tens of thousands, of them will have to go to extraordinary lengths on election day to prove that they have the right to cast a ballot. History suggests many of these new voters will either give up when challenged or fail to show up at all.

• Tweets Give Race-Baiting Hoaxster a ‘B’ for Effort | Threat Level from Wired.com

  Too funny. Hoax campaign girl getting hash-tag twitter grief.

  tags: elections08, hoax

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

1. Politics and Culture Reads around the Web 10/24/2008
2. Politics and Culture Reads around the Web 10/29/2008
3. Politics and Culture Reads around the Web 10/27/2008
4. Politics and Culture Reads around the Web 10/28/2008

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.