On The Cornel West Album That Larry Summers Kept Calling A Rap CD
@CTD Cornel West is a giant in African American studies and over his long academic career has meticulously catalogued the painful history of American Blacks all the way from slavery right up to 1972. You laying a jive rap on the brother with that mess.
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On 'Citizens United': "The Purest Kind of Judicial Activism"
That was awful and the root of it's awfulness is Toobin's inability to recognise that not everyone is the hack he is. It's why he is forced to sketch out the absurd portrait of Kennedy as some kind of judicial schizophrenic who lurches wildly between extremes without rhyme or reason. In truth Kennedy has one of the more consistent jurisprudences of the Justices and it isn't surprising that it sometimes leads to outcomes that are "conservative" and sometimes leads to outcomes that are "liberal". But poor Toobin cannot wrap his brain around it at all hence Kennedy the fanciful Jekyll and Hyde character. To him law is just politics with lots of latin phrases for color.
The entire basis for Robert's supposed political calculations presented in the essay is simply Toobin's disbelief that the Law could ever be anything else. The fact that Robert's conduct can be much better explained by resort to established legal practice is moot in Toobin's eyes because he doesn't really believe there is any such thing.
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On Mitt Romney: No Nixon
What is this I hear in the media about Romney driving for hours with a gay schoolboy tied to the car roof?
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On The Highly Enjoyable Keith Olbermann Lawsuit
I always thought Olbermaan deserved more ridicule for his face. The fact that it looks like that on purpose negates the traditional arguments about attacking people for their looks imo.
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On British Man Commits Treason
Beer is not something to be savoured. I don't care what someone might say nobody has ever tasted the hops in a beer( nor does anyone actually know what hops even taste like). Beer is a tool.
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On The Evil Economics Of Judging Teachers
I can think of a wide variety of problems in looking to Finland as a model for US policy. They're probably similar to the ones you'd come up with if I were to argue for the loosening of gun laws by highlighting the far lower incidence of gun crime in Finland as compared to the US.
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On Man Mean
Alex Pareene is a hipster Joel Stein. Admit it to yourselves.
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On The Black Millionaires Of Occupy Wall Street
Abe Sauer sure is a huffy dick. "Yes, the claim you make in the opening paragraph is plainly correct, but if I choose to interpret this obviously figurative sentence in a literal way it becomes ridiculous!". Fuck off with that, son. What's the point? you must be joining in literary solidarity with your occupy brothers by writing obnoxious things that serve no real purpose in pursuit of nebulousthoughsurelyrighteous goals.
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On How Much More Do Televisions Cost Today?
Nowhere in the Heritage reports does it say anything about who is 'really' poor. The percentage of poor households who own various amenities are not given to establish whether they are poor by some luxury goods based definition of poverty cooked up by the heritage foundation. They are given so the reader can see that the picture painted of poverty in america as necessarily representing severe material deprivation, which is very often the picture painted by the advocates for various anti-poverty policies, does not resemble reality even slightly.
The linked backgrounder is actually agnostic on what the definition of poverty should be. All it essentially says is that if people are going to talk about poverty in absolute rather than relative terms then a) these statements should be accurate and b) the policies such talk is used to support should actually address the things you're suggesting they are. I don't find much to get upset about in that, but then again, I dont care much about income inequality, a nebulous non-concept which holds that the gradation of income should be made to conform to some arbitrarily asserted statistical figure (though which no-one will say. What is the just level of income inequality?), and as such enjoys such public apathy that the only way you can get through measures to address it is to pretend that they are addressing something else entirely.
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On Man Goes Hungry
@Morbo I've never understood the "that guy is an asshole so of course he must be one of their guys" line of thinking. It doesn't take much life experience to realise that assholes are the most diverse class of people in the entire world.