First Draft

Standing

I was David Simon's handler for Rising Tide 6. It was my pleasure: he was friendly, courteous and totally professional. He also gave a very interesting speech centered around the concept of standing. It's most familiar to me as a legal term as in standing to sue. The speech *almost* gave me law school flashbacks but I reeled that reaction in.

Anyhoo, here's Simon's speech with an introduction by moi. It's a bit hammy but, hey, you gotta work the room, y'all:

David Simon - Keynote Speaker, Rising Tide VI from Jason Berry on Vimeo.

 

 

Rising Tide Thank You Post

This is a shamelessly mushy post of mushiness. Feel free to skip if you're not into that sort of thing.

Rising Tide 6 Webcast

Okey dokey, it's the big day. This is RT's first webcast and hopefully everything will go relatively smoothly. Click here from 9AM CST on or forever hold your peace.

Rising Tide 6 Blogging

I'll have more later, since I got here yesterday and have decided to just sleep when I get home, but my first impression is that this is such a different place from four years ago, the energy and joy are incandescent, and seeing it makes me happy the way you are when you see a friend succeed at something: Way to fucking go, man, that's awesome.

Liveblogging updates within.

Latest shameless Rising Tide plug

Long time, no plug. The conference is coming up this Saturday and may well be the best yet since I'm only going to be onstage to introduce David Simon. Here's another tidbit: Athenae will be attending and staying in Dr. A and my guest room. Oscar usually likes to crush our guest's legs so she has that to look forward to.

Anyhoo, if you're interested in attending or donating to the conference click here. There will be a web cast and I'll post that information when it's available.

Below is a clip from the WWL-TV morning news wherein anchor Sally Ann Roberts interviews my friends and fellow organizers Bart Everson and Alli Dejong. WWL-TV is the big kahuna of local stations: its morning show kills the Today Show in the ratings. So, Sally Ann is the queen of the morning in NOLA as well as Robin Roberts' older sister:

 

Rising Tide 6 Brass Band Panel

  


It's shameless plug time again, y'all. I'm not only one of the organizers of Rising Tide but a little birdie tells me that we're going to have a record turn out of First Draft bloggers this year.

Anyway, we've decided to do something completely different to end the conference, a panel discussing the NOLA brass band tradition that concludes with a performance from the TBC (To Be Continued) Brass Band. Here's how Cousin Pat described it at the RT blog:

The Brass Bands Panel will feature Lawrence Rawlins, band director of Roots of Music; Alejandro de los Rios, producer of the Brass Roots documentary; members of the TBC Brass Band Edward “Juicy” Jackson, Joe Maize and Sean Michael Roberts; moderated by writer Deborah Cotton and followed by a performance by the TBC Brass Band.

The conference takes place on Saturday August 27th at Xavier University. For more information and how to register CLICK HERE. Lunch will be catered by J'anita's at the Rendon Inn and served up by my dear friends, J'anita's owners, Craig and Kim Giescke.

Finally, here's a sample of TCB's music as filmed by moderator Big Red Cotton:

 

The Tide Is High

Time for a shameless plug for Rising Tide 6 coupled with a swell Blondie tune. There are two more days to register for the conference at the low, low price of 25 smackers. It goes up to $30 on 7/1, which is still a good deal.This year's conference will take place on Saturday August, 27 at Xavier University in NOLA.

If you're interested in registering, please click here:

 

I Heart ONTD_Political

They take a discussion of complete and total asshattery and race!fail, and turn it into a celebration of beauty and talent in all shapes and sizes.

Especially interesting is the whole sub-thread on black female opera singers, because I don't know shit about opera, so seeing some visuals and being prompted to Google some names was fascinating. 

My personal favorite who kept coming up in the thread is Freema Agyeman, with whom I am currently obsessed because I've been mainlining all of Law and Order: UK. (Okay, part of it is a Ben Daniels obsession, too. I mean, neck, and I don't understand how someone's eyes can be that color, like how it can be legal.) Agyeman's character is layered and interesting and she's a powerhouse of an actress, and I like that Alesha Phillips doesn't take any crap from anyone about growing up poor. 

Mostly, though, the original article is just so hateful and stupid. The idea of objective attractiveness is absurd; you can talk about standards of beauty, and how those have influenced our perceptions of what is and is not conventionally accepted as pretty in mainstream society, and natter on about that for a while if you like. But no matter how much you dictate that only a certain body type or skin color or hair type is attractive, there are going to be people out there mucking up your perfect picture of the world by being turned on by what they're turned on by.

It's a bummer, how they don't fit into your little boxes, but there they are anyway, looking at pictures of Pam Grier and swooning.

A.

Can't Stop the Signal

So here's what I've pieced together from Scout on the phone, the Twitter feed going bonkers, stuff you've all e-mailed to me and actual official accounts from places:

The live feed went dead around 5:30, I think.

The Capitol had been locked down at 4, nobody else was going in and people were going out, into the arms of happy supportive folks ringing the building. Several hundred were still inside listening to speaker after speaker: One would suggest they leave, another implore them to stay, all of them saying "law enforcement is on our side," at which people cheered like the Packers just won the Super Bowl again. Cops were standing around, and it was hard to hear. Nobody knew what was going to happen.

And you could just fucking forget about getting any info from anybody other than this guy with an iPhone who took it upon himself to stream stuff to the world, because he could. National news networks? Asleep at the switch. Protesters were hanging with cops and with the exception of a couple of attention-seeking dicks, everybody was either singing or dancing or taking pictures of each other or chanting or knitting or something. The chants only sounded angry if you hadn't been there, didn't know that the volume was enthusiasm, not rage.

CNN, nowhere to be found. Fox was only interested in if some hackey-sack playing douche got handcuffed shouting about Lenin. MSNBC, nada. Everybody was at the Oscars, after all, and maybe Charlie Sheen would be there. 

The live feed went dead and the Internet crapped out, so my landline starts ringing and it's Scout and she can't hear me at all, she's just reporting stuff hoping I can hear it and am taking it down for publication somehow. Things were tense. Things were scary; nobody quite knew what was going down. Mass arrests? Sit-ins? Fights? All the good work of the past two weeks, all the positive energy and decency and warmth, all to be undone in one night? Nobody quite knew what was going to happen.

And then something did.

The cops decided fuck this, we're not grabbing these people and dragging them out. We're not giving the TV people the pictures they want. We're not turning the last two weeks of joy into the usual horror show just because we can.

We're letting these protesters stay, because they're not hurting anything, and the majority of them are being cooperative, and fuck it, basically, Cops for Labor was down there and some firefighters, and do you really want to arrest those guys? Besides, they do happen to be right. It is their house, and if we need to clean it up a bit (the official justification for closing the building) we'll just kind of scoot them around so the custodial crews can sweep behind them and their stuff.

Ever since this started I've been wrong about everything. I keep saying to Scout and to Mr. A and to Jude, I've been wrong about everything. I didn't think the unions had the numbers or frankly the stones to tell Walker to shove it. I didn't think the Democrats had the big brass swinging ones necessary to march across the border. I didn't think the protests could be sustained and grow without some kind of national leadership, and I thought for sure some asshole would ruin everything tonight by waving a copy of the Socialist Worker around and throwing a tantrum.

On every single count, I have been wrong, and I have been overjoyed to be wrong. I want to be wrong forever. I want to be wrong until the Wisconsin 14 come home and, joined by three courageous Republicans, vote this miserable bill down.

Part of the reason what's happening in Wisconsin is so unusual is that this movement is sustaining itself without nonstop pimping by the national press. The Tea Party got flogged 24-7 and had Dick Armey's money backing it. These people aren't hearing their poltical power affirmed every time they turn on the TV. They're reading op-eds from dicks like Krauthammer talking about how terrible they are, and yet they're getting up and going to work and then going out to protest every single day since February 14.

The story's getting out any way it has to, because it's too good not to share.They're sleeping sound in the Capitol tonight. They got the word out via Twitter and cell phones and Facebook and the iPhone stream of some guy I never heard of but now would like to hug, and the last thing Scout told me before hopefully collapsing for some well-deserved sleep is that the protesters were high-fiving the lady driving the floor buffer polishing the statehouse marble.

I'm not sure we have poetry adequate to that. I'm not sure it's been invented yet. But I know by the time I get up tomorrow and check in with friends online, someone will have come up with something.

A.

 

Scout's Inside the Capitol Right Now, Filming

UPDATE III: Republican State Sen. Dale Schultz will not support the Walker bill! Confirmed by Mother Jones. Now saying unconfirmed, but will keep you posted. Protesters just changed giant sign asking for "3 cou-R-ageous Republicans" to 2. If it's true and two more Republicans join him, it's over.

From Scout: Ha tv crews filming dancing cheers and not arrests!! What a crazy miraculous ride this thing is. #wiunion

Update II: Scout's Interwebs are back on! Follow her here.

Scout's inside but can't get Internet to Tweet or send pix. Just got off the phone with her and here's the sitch:

Cops asked everyone staying inside and planning to be arrested to go up to the first floor, above the ground floor. The VAST majority of people complied, and chanted "peaceful protest" to the rythymn of a hockey cheer, and are behaving respectfully. They're not leaving, but they're not resisting instructions other than that.

Four or five people most Madisonians would recognize from every protest about everything have refused and are sitting on the ground floor basically begging to be arrested. The TV cameras, naturally, are surrounding them. One of these folks gave the finger to protesters upstairs who were chanting "come up here" and "the story's up here."

People on the second floor are predominantly the young people who have been orgnanizin the protests all week and working to keep everything civilized. They're being ignored in favor of angry dreadlocked dudes who Fox News is very interested in.

Scout interviewed the police chief (she didn't say which one and it was hard to hear but I think she meant capitol police) who said they don't want to make arrests. The Capitol has been shut down for an hour now, and nobody wants to turn this into a bad scene.

Basically the atmosphere is tense, but not because the cops are throwing down. Mostly just because nobody knows what's going to happen.

There were 10K viewers on the live stream before it cut out about 20 minutes ago.

More as I get it from her.

Update: Scout talked to a protester who's been there since the beginning and says the people who are trying to get arrested right now only recently joined the movement.

Said cops don't want to make arrests and might not, because they recognize this week has been good for them, too, and will keep things calm as long as they can. Situation less tense now that almost everybody has obeyed police and moved to designated area.

A.

Walker's Used To These Kinds of Conversations

THIS.

Also, as I said in comments when this was first mentioned, what this says is that Walker's used to taking jokey calls from rich assholes in which they call attractive broadcasters hot pieces of ass and kid around about stuff that means people's lives.

It's not that what he said was all that new, given what anyone with a pair of eyes can see, it's that at no point during this call, during all these monstrous things, did Walker even THINK this might be a prank. At no point did he say, wait a minute, this person is rather a douche, and excuse me but who are you? No, he giggled along with casual discussions of smashing the entire state's underpinnings like he talks to people like this a thousand times a day.

A lot of his defenders spent the day pointing out that most of Walker's comments aren't anything new, and that the blogger actually comes off far worse for saying all those horrible things, and that's the entire goddamn point. Walker is someone who is totally used to being around people who say shit like that, so used to it he didn't even question whether the call was real. That's the real news here: That this guy is even more of an asshole than everybody who already hates him thought he was.

A.

Hey, Driftglass is Famous

A little happiness on a lousy day:

Another anonymous commentator, a man who blogs about Chicago politics and pop culture while identifying himself only as Driftglass, says the mayor's race is ripe for skewering on social media “because absent of an issue, it's about personalities. That's what good humor is about. You don't hear five-minute routines on TIF funding, but you're hearing Rahm Emanuel using ‘f—-.' “

He notes, too, that Chicago's political system is being shaken up for the first time in decades.

“Other cities have transitions every four to six years. They know how to do it. We don't. There's a level of panic at the highest levels of government,” he says. “Add that to the fact that we're in Chicago, the president's backyard, and that one of the candidates is a close personal friend, and it's a circus stuck inside of an opera inside of a blockbuster movie.”

The option for commentators to keep out of the spotlight helps, too.

“I have a civilian life where I deal with people (in business and politics), and I'm trying to find common ground, so I don't want my politics to play into it,” Driftglass says in a phone interview.

Remaining anonymous, he says, harkens back to the pamphleteers of the Revolutionary War period. “They could say things that they otherwise couldn't say without losing their heads.”

A.

The Kids are alright!

 

Sorry for breaking out of my cage, but I thought we could all use some good news this morning.

At the end of September, I received a notification from donorschoose.org that a Journalism class needed help to buy a decent digital SLR camera. Donorschoose offered $25 in matching funds, so I donated more in the name of First Draft.

Got this today:

Dear Tommy, 

We are honestly completely overwhelmed and excited about the new camera we received last week. in just this short amount of time, I have seen a dramatic increase in the students' enthusiasm for journalism and the quality of pictures. I know that our October newspaper issue (and all future issues) will be far superior to anything we have created in the past. It only through your generosity that we have been able to achieve this feat and I am able to keep the journalistic spark alive in our high school. Please believe me when I say this is the kindest gift our class has ever received. Thank you again for your donation!

With gratitude,
Mrs. B.

Sep 25 Tommy from Texas

"Class - the camera doesn't lie. Now go out and capture the truth."

Bigger Photos

No More Hippie Punching

I was a genuine hippie at one point in my life. I saw the Grateful Dead more times than I can remember <insert joke> had long hair when it was still possible for me to grow it and wore the same jeans jacket for 7 years. (A friend called it my "drug coat" and she wasn't far wrong.) I drew the line, however, at hackey sack, patchouli oil and incense. Feh.

This post is NOT about literal hippies but about the virtual hippies of the so-called professional left. I'm somewhat jealous of them, actually, since I am merely one of the amateur left. Does that make me a beatnik or something else? I'm not sure...

Anyway, some high profile virtual hippies had a conference call with White House spinmeister David Axelrod and his well-manscaped eyebrows. It's all over the inteweb now but I stumbled on to the exchange at Greg Sargent's blog so I'll cut and paste his post:

Top Obama adviser David Axelrod got an earful of the liberal blogosphere's anger at the White House moments ago, when a blogger on a conference call directly called out Axelrod over White House criticism of the left, accusing the administration of "hippie punching."

"We're the girl you'll take under the bleachers but you won't be seen with in the light of day," the blogger, Susan Madrak of Crooks and Liars, pointedly told Axelrod on the call, which was organzied for liberal bloggers and progressive media.

The call seemed to perfectly capture the tense dynamic that exists between the White House and the online and organized left: Though White House advisers in the past have dumped on the left, anonymously and even on the record, Axelrod repeatedly pleaded with the bloggers on the call for help in pumping up the flagging enthusiasm of rank and file Dems.

"You play a great role in informing people about the stakes of elections," Axelrod told the bloggers. "One of the reasons I was eager to expend time was to enlist you."

But hovering over the call was the obvious disconnect between this plea for help and statements like those of Robert Gibbs, who recently pilloried the "professional left" for being overly critical of the White House.

That tension burst out into the open when Madrak directly asked Axelrod: "Have you ever heard of hippie punching?" That prompted a long silence from Axelrod.

"You want us to help you, the first thing I would suggest is enough of the hippie punching," Madrak added. "We're the girl you'll take under the bleachers but you won't be seen with in the light of day."

Axelrod didn't engage on "hippie punching," but he said he agreed with the blogger. "To the extent that we shouldn't get involved in intramural skirmishing, I couldn't agree more," Axelrod said. "We just can't afford that. There are big things at stake here."

Madrak replied that Axelrod was missing the point -- that the criticism of the left made it tougher for bloggers like herself to motivate the base. "Don't make our jobs harder," she said.

"Right back at'cha. Right back at'cha," Axelrod replied, a bit testily, an apparent reference to blogospheric criticism of the administration.

At any rate, for Axelrod to plead with liberal bloggers for their help turning out the base, only to get accused of "hippie punching," is an iconic moment in Campaign 2010.

Hey, at least she didn't suggest that Axe drink bong juice. I only have one more thing to add to this:bummer man.

For Susie Madrak's account get thee to Crooks and Liars. I now officially have a crush on her.

Love Story

Belated congrats to Grandmére and Grandpére.

A.

Not the only one

Yeah, yeah, posting out of turn and all but it's Friday, plus Athenae said I could do some extra RT5-related posting. Pretty sure she meant during, rather than after, the event but hey, in New Orleans, the party never really ends.

Credit/blame to racymind for the song. It was on her ipod, we did pass by Hammond, it became part of the trip soundtrack. But it does work here, too, because it's a song — a story really — about families, mostly about choice, about what and who you choose to stand for and with. About how sometimes what might seem a choice to someone else is, to you, an imperative. Crystalline, unavoidable despite the odds of success or failure. 

It works because this is actually a post about Rising Tide 5, at least a highly subjective take thereon, and all those things are part of what RT is about.  A community of like-minded citizen journalists choosing to continue to stand together, not because they can't stop looking backwards, or because they can't get over something that happened five years ago, but rather because they see the truth. In fact, they cannot help but do so: a lot of shit that started five years ago is still happening, is happening again, over and over, and more continues to start new every day.  Mac McClelland pretty much nailed it in her keynote. If you STILL haven't seen the video, just go, do it now.  

It was an awfully damn inspiring event to take part in. I'll be there next year for sure. Don't have a choice not to. 

Mac McClelland's Rising Tide 5 Keynote

If you have a bit of spare time to watch it, Mac's keynote was both entertaining and informative. My favorite bit was when she called Governor PBJ  "a fucking douchebag." Mac definitely had her Mother Jones as well as her Mojo working or are they the same thing?

Mac was introduced by her Bloody Mary tech and NOLA blogger, Jeffrey Bostick:

Rising Tide V: Keynote by Mother Jones reporter Mac McClelland (28 Aug 2010 NOLA) from Sophielab on Vimeo.

First Draft Does Rising Tide

Rising Tide 5 was such a great success that I'm still exhausted from all the talking, eating and drinking I did last weekend. I'm way too tired to be coherent but I wanted to post a picture of the First Draft bloggers who attended. Dr. A took the snap first thing in the morning. The other shot was better of me but I decided to take one for the team.

From left to right: Michael F, Virgo Tex et moi:

 

I hope that Athenae, Jude and the rest of the gang can make it next year.

America

Fuck yeah.

A.

Mac McClelland of Mother Jones To Speak At Rising Tide 5

It's shameless plug time again. This morning on behalf of Rising Tide, Oyster made this announcement:

Mac McClelland, human rights journalist for Mother Jones, has agreed to be keynote speaker for Rising Tide 5. We're thrilled to have McClelland at our conference, as she has written many of the most compelling stories about the oil gusher's effect on coastal communities.

Mac will be the first woman keynoter in Rising Tide history and we're delighted to have her. The Conference will be held August 28, 2010 at the Howlin' Wolf in New Orleans. For more information, click here.

Another Shameless Rising Tide 5 Plug

Our little Rising Tide conference is coming up in the world. Our fearless leader, Dangerblond has arranged for a group hotel rate for out of town attendees:

We have a Rising Tide 5 group rate at the Marriott Springhill Suites Hotel, across the street from The Howlin' Wolf.'

Thurs night, 8/26 - Sun night, 8/29 = $79.00 per night

All rooms are "suites" with sitting room/office area

Rate applies to rooms with 1 king bed or 2 double beds

Double rooms sleep 6, King rooms sleep 4

Telephone 1.888.364.1200 to make reservations.

The cutoff date for reservations is August 9th. Single Reservation.  Double Reservation.

Since we're talkin' hotels, here's the classic 10CC tune:

 

Rising Tide 5

It's hard to believe but the fifth annual Rising Tide Conference is just around the corner. First Draft's very own Scout Prime suggested the idea for the first one and a bunch of NOLA bloggers took the ball and ran with it. If you're interested in learning more, head over to risingtidenola.com. The conference will be held Saturday 8/28 at the Howlin' Wolf in New Orleans. If you can't attend we accept donations as well. Holy pledge week, Batman.

We'll have all sorts of interesting and, hopefully, entertaining content planned. I'll be moderating the annual politics panel, which thus far features the dean of NOLA political punditry, Clancy DuBos and Jason (Ashe Dambala) Berry of American Zombie fame. I'm already working on the diaper jokes. Last year I called David Vitter a "human cockroach" because of his survival skills and the bastard, alas,remains ahead in the polls.

Here's this year's poster, which was done  for the fourth year in a row by Greg (Suspect Device) Peters:

Republicans vs. The Internet

Advantage: Internet:

Instead of making lots of little guns and cannons for the war we should use the funds to make one really really big cannon that shoots nukes that shoot out smaller nukes. It should be shaped like a |>3ni$ and called "the big shot"

---

The password is password. This is fun. It's like agent Smith infecting everybody in the matrix until everyone is and agent Smith clone. Someone call Neo!

---

I like to think of myself as a real American with real opinions on things and so I want you to know that you should vote YES on the new NET NEUTRALITY penalty in the NBA. It's time these showboaters learn to focus on the fundamentals!

---

First and foremost, our primary goals for foreign policy would be to nuke korea. Not North Korea... SOUTH Korea. By eliminating most of the competition for Starcraft: Brood War, we will be able to usher in a new age of cyber champions

---

Offer free tattoos of Ronald Reagan for every American's forehead. Then, when people stop getting Reagan tattoos, we run around and shoot people without them. YEAAAAH!!! WOLVERINES!!!

That's as far as I got before the thing crashed my browser window. I swear to God, isn't there anybody in the Party that actually uses the Internet for something other than raising money who could tell them this is the kind of thing that always, always happens, because out here lies nothing but gleefully destructive, filthy-minded pranksters looking for the next joke?

A.

Geauxjira

My frenemy Michael Homan obviously has too much time on his hands. He's decided to become the Ed Wood of the NOLA blogoshpere with an oil geyser inspired homage to Godzilla. I'm not sure if he wore an angora sweater and women's underwear during the shoot but I certainly hope not:

As Usual, Code Pink Has Bigger Balls Than Anyone

But they were wearing silly costumes and hats!

Good for them for making sure that bastard can't appear in public without at least one voice raised to call him a murdering war criminal.

A.

Quote This, You Prick

Yes, it's true.

So, a friend was having a debate about health care via the Internets the other day.  She shared with me the following quotes that the anti-health-care-for-everyone douchebag was using to buttress his position.  Here they are:

"You cannot help people permanently by doing for them, what they could and should do for themselves." - Abraham Lincoln

"Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have ... The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases." -Thomas Jefferson

"I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them." - Thomas Jefferson

These people are so fucking stupid.

I was thinking about this the other day.  If you try to argue your position using quotes and sound bites, your'e a fucking moron.  For every "You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war," someone can counter with "One must prepare for war in times of peace."  It's idiotic.  Also, just because Lincoln, or Gandhi, or Einstein, or Jefferson said something about issues in their times doesn't necessarily mean shit to us now.  These quotes are divorced from context, and they are meant to confer a level of authority on the speaker that is intended to make the speaker's position unassailable.  Now, that's not to deny the usefulness of slogans as rallying points.  It's a useful tool to have a pithy, memorable statement of your general stance.  But, to make a fucking argument, you need more than catch phrases.  Duh.

That said, why not get to the usage of the quotes themselves, for some further stupidity?  "Depend on somebody other than the government for their own well being" doesn't automatically mean "depend on yourself."  What about charities, churches, family, friends, etc?  And, if it is the case that you automatically go from "government" to individual," even if you allow for that false dichotomy, then it begs the question:  Why do we have a military?  Police force?  You can go on with that.  If that quote summed up Lincoln, then he never would have fought the Civil War.  "Hey, those slaves can and should free themselves.  If we go in and do it, we won't be helping them permanently."  (Now, if someone agrees with that statement, then there's just no hope for that person.)

As for "Republicans taking care of themselves":  If that's the case, why do Republican businesspeople accept government contracts?  What about subsidies, tax breaks, writeoffs, lobbying, preferential treatment of wealthy people (not synonymous with "Republican," I know, but there is significant overlap between those categories) by all institutions of society, caps on payroll taxes, or any freaking thing else that Republicans want?  Using the government to your own ends, to advantage your group at the expense of others, is now "taking care of yourself?"  Bullshit.

The Jefferson-attributed quotes are a little more substantive, but remember:  When Jefferson lived, there was no General Electric, no Nike, no Microsoft, no Allstate, and no Blue Fucking Cross.  There were, really, three poles of power:  Government, the People, and the Church.  The Church was effectively neutered in America due to (intra-Protestant) competition for believers.  No one faction was strong enough to exert a decisive overall (not just regional) influence in Colonial/Early America.  And the Federalists and anti-Federalists took pains to ensure that organized religion and secular government didn't intrude on each other.  So that leaves the People and the Government.  No gigantic corporations, no armies of lobbyists, no wage-slavery in factories.  Hell, the Industrial Revolution hadn't hit America when Jefferson wrote that.  So, in a basically bi-polar world, a gain in power by one group almost certainly necessitates a dimunition in power of the other.  Today, however, we have another tri-polar system:  Business, Government, People.  When Government sides with the People (e.g., the New Deal, the Great Society), then what you see is protection of workers and citizens from the most egregious depredations of Business (but the businesspeople still make boatloads of money--they're just slightly smaller boats).  When, on the other hand, Government sides with Business, you get fewer protections for everyday people, and crap like we have now--busted unions, wrecked communities, regressive taxes.  I've left out the third possibility of two-on-one alliances, Business + People vs. Government, because we really haven't seen that one.  Perhaps in a dystopic future novel, but not in any historical case that springs to mind right now.

Now, I have very little training in political science.  I possess no advanced degrees.  Those two facts are germane because they point to this conclusion:  This shit is obvious.  If people don't see it, it's because they've never tried, or they just don't want to.

Finally--here's the best part.  Neither Lincoln nor Jefferson actually said the things that are attributed to them by our teabagging friend up there.  Which, you know, is kind of obvious from the prose.  The closest thing to an actual Jefferson quote is the "I predict future happiness..." thing, which kind-of, sort-of, if you squint a little, captures the essence of something Jefferson did say.  As for Mr. Lincoln, those are the words of a Reverend William J. H. Boetcker, who published a list commonly called the "Ten Cannots."  This happened fifty years after Lincoln was dead.  Saint Ronnie made the common misattribution of those words to Lincoln at the 1992 Republican Convention.  As far as "Government big enough to supply..." goes, well, Gerald R. Ford is the first known user of that particular phrase.  But hey--Jefferson, Ford, what's the difference?  At least they were both Presidents. 

Ain't that a kick in the head?  Of course, five minutes with Teh Great Gizoogle would have sufficed to make Mr. Quote-o-matic there not look like the fool that he is.  Oh well.  Sucks to be him.  Remember, Quote Master--admitting you're an asshole is the first step.

What we have here, dear readers, is an unassisted double FAIL.

Another First Draft Reader-Supported Project Gets Off the Ground

Our resident Freepaholic, Tommy, asked you some time back to join in supporting a journalism project to help make tomorrow's media. In just a day you had that one handled the way you'd handled the two I asked about the week prior, and here are the results:

The teacher involved writes:

Dear Tommy,

Once again, I would like to thank you all very much for supporting both my Journalism and my Grammar&Composition classes!

I had originally anticipated that the LCD projector would be most beneficial to my senior Journalism students because we do a lot of PowerPoint lessons, surfing the net, and blogging as part of the class; however, I discovered that my freshmen Grammar & Composition classes also excelled in phrases, clauses, and sentence types with the use of projected and interactive lessons. In fact, the freshmen were disappointed that I didn't think of them when I wrote the proposal. They were pleased to reap the rewards of having it in the classroom though!

I cannot begin to explain what a boon the LCD projector has been to all of my students. It has allowed my Journalism students to critique layouts of both professional and student newspapers as a large group. It has helped me show my students how to avoid plagiarism by navigating websites that show proper citation and sticky situations to avoid. It has reminded my students that there are people, unrelated to education in a direct way, that want them to succeed and are willing to facilitate that success.

Thank you so much for your generous donations. My students and I very much appreciate your help.

With gratitude,
Ms. D.

I love that it's being used to teach not just ooh shiny toy but basic skills, because the skill set — communicating clearly and intelligently — crosses platforms and will apply to journalistic tools the kids may have to use that aren't in wide circulation yet. I also love that the lesson they're learning is that they as future journalists and future media consumers are important and that we care.

Well done, everybody.

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