Politics
- ‘SNL’ Mitt Romney Cold Open Mocks GOP Candidate’s Desperation
- Obama v. Romney: The philosopher candidates – Linda Hirshman – Salon.com —
Not since the New Deal have two candidates embodied the parties’ philosophical divide as much as Romney and Obama
It’s the ideology, stupid. Democrats think Americans should learn to play well with others. Republicans do not.
This should not be news. A revived conservative movement dating back to the Fifties has succeeded in locking the Republicans into the philosophy of possessive individualism that was always a strand in the American story. In turn, they have portrayed the Democrats as the collectivist Other. This election the Democrats, or at least their presidential candidate, Barack Obama, has decided he can no longer duck the fight. In a fiery speech to the American Society of Newspaper Editors last week Obama put it baldly: “This is not just another run of the mill political debate. I’ve said it’s the defining issue of our time and I believe it. What leaders in both parties have traditionally understood is that the [Democratic government programs] aren’t part of some scheme to redistribute wealth from one group to another. They are expressions of the fact that we are one nation.”
- National Review’s John Derbyshire Pens Racist Screed With ‘Advice’ He Gave His Children on Avoiding Black People | Video Cafe—
- National Review fires John Derbyshire – POLITICO.com
The National Review has fired longtime columnist John Derbyshire following an article he wrote for an online magazine that was widely viewed as racist.
“[Derbyshire’s] latest provocation, in a webzine, lurches from the politically incorrect to the nasty and indefensible,” National Review Editor Rich Lowry wrote in a statement posted late Saturday night. “We never would have published it, but the main reason that people noticed it is that it is by a National Review writer. Derb is effectively using our name to get more oxygen for views with which we’d never associate ourselves otherwise. So there has to be a parting of the ways.”
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Climate & Climate Politics
- Global Warming Denialism ‘Just Foolishness,’ Scientist Peter Raven Says – ABC News
- And a piece from the denial writer Pat Michaels on the denial platform Forbes: The Dinosaur Media Prematurely Bury Climate Warming Skeptics — Again – Forbes
Religion
- Daily Kos: Pagan roots of Easter
- Andrew Copson Discussing Crosses In The Workplace – BBC News | Token Skeptic