Trump’s base: not the white working class, but white evangelicals — all men and lesser-educated women — who believe the ends justify the means Via Digby: __________________ 1. Trump has always been unpopular with college-educated voters [A] Pew Research assessment … [using a] validated voter survey (they matched voter file with the survey respondents) showed white women narrowly preferring Trump to Clinton by 2 points – 47 percent to 45 percent. … the Pew...
Read More »Oklahoma Teachers Purge Statehouse of Their Enemies
“For nearly a decade, Republican officials have been treating ordinary Oklahomans like the colonial subjects of an extractive empire. On Governor Mary Fallin’s watch, fracking companies have turned the Sooner State into the earthquake capital of the world; dictated policy to her attorney general; and strong-armed legislators into giving them a $470 million tax break — in a year when Oklahoma faced a $1.3 billion budget shortfall.” The state went from...
Read More »The Nastiest Motives of Nasty People
“Economists are active militants against the concept of the lump of labor, that is, the popular idea that the total number of jobs or of working hours is fixed (Walker, 2007).” The quote is the first line from a 2017 paper by Tito Boeri, et al. It gives me confidence that at least some of the time my message is getting through. The image below is from a 2018 report published by the Roosevelt Institute. It tells me there is still a huge amount of work to...
Read More »A graph for Sunday: 2012 Obama voters by 2016 vote
(Dan here…a little late posting,,,my fault) A graph for Sunday: 2012 Obama voters by 2016 vote – by New Deal democrat This is a graph I’ve been meaning to comment on, that I saw on Vox.com a couple of weeks ago. It breaks down Obama voters from 2012 based on who they voted for in 2016, and adds in Romney voters who voted for Clinton in 2016: As an aside, note that the graphs measure opinions per group, and definitely *not* their number. Also,...
Read More »Is Aretha The Equal Of Michelangelo?
Is Aretha The Equal Of Michelangelo? In the Washington Post of August 17, Chris Richards declared that the performance by Aretha Franklin of the title cut on her 1972 gospel-soul album, “Amazing Grace” “deserves to be compared to everything Michelangelo ever painted.” Now I am not prepared to go that far, but when I learned she had died, it as this particular song by her on that album (which I have in vinyl from when it first came out) that I wanted...
Read More »Another Great Passes on Into the History of Soul
[embedded content] 1964 “Won’t Be Long” [embedded content] 1967 “Respect” [embedded content] “My Country Tis of Thee” A pgl request in comments [embedded content] Having Church . . . “Rock Steady,” A little “Soul Train” “Aretha Franklin, Queen of Soul, Dead at 76”
Read More »Cuomo: America ‘was never that great’
Cuomo at an event, where he signed anti sex-trafficking bills into law. “We’re not gonna make America great again. It was never that great. We have not reached greatness and we will reach greatness when every American is fully engaged. We will reach greatness when discrimination and stereotyping against women, 51 percent of our population, is gone and every woman’s full potential is realized and unleashed. When every woman is making her full contribution...
Read More »In Defence of Comrade D’Souza
David Frum does not have a favorable view of Dinesh D’Souza and his latest movie, “Death of a Nation.” He argues sthat D’Souza’s alleged history is fiction, and that D’Souza is governed almost entirely by resentment of all of the experts in all of the fields in which he dabbles, who note that he is dishonest, partisan, and unoriginal. It is alarming that D’Souza has become prominent again and is praised by the President. However, I do agree with D’Souza...
Read More »Sunday Morning News Clips
Manual Transmission Foils Car Theft “A press release from the Nashville police department said they arrested two teenagers last Wednesday aftr they attempted to carjack two women that day and failed. The teens ultimately failed both times, with the second being because the car had a manual transmission. They had to run away on foot.” We Reserve the Right to Refuse Service . . . A British woman tried to place an order at her local McDonald’s while on...
Read More »“as a”
“as a” Kwame Anthony Appiah has an op-ed in Sunday’s New York Times dissecting the “as a” locution, in which one first announces one’s gender, race, sexual orientation, or class position before making an argument during a public discussion. He interprets it as a claim to represent the entire group defined in the preparatory clause, and explains why this claim is invalid; better you should begin with “speaking for myself”. But I disagree with his...
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