Back to School Homework

It has been a busy couple weeks, hence the fewer posts I have been making. Last week, my Grandma had emergency surgery and is still in the hospital. I have started my job as a 2nd grade teacher this week (well, I started 2 weeks ago, but finally started getting paid for it this week). The kids come on Tuesday for the 1st day of school, so I have been busy getting my room ready, attending workshops, and planning curriculum. It is fun though. To top it off, my sister-in-law, who is pregnant, went to the hospital today and will probably deliver tonight or tomorrow.

Here are some articles that I was going to blog about, if I wasn't so busy. Since it is back to school time, here is some homework for this weekend.

• Randi Rhodes of Air America Radio interviewed Sen. Byron Dorgan about his new book, Take This Job and Ship It, about the so-called Free Trade agreements. Very interesting interview. (Most interesting statement: Dorgan said the US has a $2 billion a DAY trade decifit.) I am adding this book to my reading list. Listen to the interview here.
  

• Politics 101: Don't Reinforce Your Opponents' Lies by David Sirota

Take, for instance, the term "moderate." This is a word the American Heritage Dictionary defines as "Being within reasonable limits; not excessive or extreme." Yet, it is applied specifically to politicians pundits who, measured against public opinion, are the opposite, like Joe Lieberman (De Facto GOP Nominee-CT), John McCain (R-AZ) and New York Times columnist David Brooks. Think about their major positions: Lieberman likens his opponents terrorist sympathizers, calls them "extremists" on national television, and shills for a war that 60 percent of Americans oppose. McCain actually wants to send more troops to Iraq - again a position only a small minority of Americans supports. Brooks calls for an end to American democracy, saying "voters shouldn't be allowed to define the choices in American politics." Yet, these folks are routinely referred to by the media and political Establishment as leading "moderates," that is, leading voices for positions that are supposedly "within reasonable limits" and are "not excessive or extreme" in relation to the rest of the country's positions.

• Politics 101: You Can't Take the Democratic Party Out of the Democratic Party by David Sirota
  

“If you pretend like you aren’t a Democrat or that your opponent is just a bad politician instead of a bad Republican politician, voters will think you are ashamed of who you are,” writes Stoller. “It’s not about being a proud Democrat, it’s about not being a tool, and voters don’t like tools.” Put another way, when you try to take the Democratic Party out of the Democratic Party, you insult voters’ intelligence, hurt the party’s long-term prospects, and generally look like an idiot.

• Off With Their Heads by Matt Taibi

These DLC types are amazing, they really are. Their pathology is unique; they all secretly worship the guilt-by-association tactics of Lee Atwater and Karl Rove, but unlike those two, not one of them has enough balls to take being thought of as the bad guy by the general public. So instead of telling big, bold whoppers right out in the open, they're forever coming out with backhanded little asides like this one, apparently in the hope that only your subconscious will notice. I won't be surprised if they respond to the next electoral loss by a DLC candidate by having Bruce Reed argue in the Wall Street Journal that "bloggers, Queer Eye, and Arabs with syphilis are not the future of the Democratic Party."

• Politicians Middle-Class Delusions by Jonahton Schwarz

Then there are the campaign contributions courted by politicians: the Center for Responsive Politics found that 86 percent of itemized money raised in 2004 came from less than 0.2 percent of Americans. Politicians spend shocking amounts of their time on the phone hitting these people up for cash, and it's safe to assume few among them worry much about hikes in their health care premiums. And when they're not raising money, politicians are rushing off to the TV studio. Lieberman, for instance, is constantly buddying it up on TV with Tim Russert (annual salary: $5 million), Sean Hannity ($5 million plus), and Chris Matthews ($4.3 million second home on Nantucket).