English Only

Ah, the future of Republican rule. I guess there is some unavoidable need to piss off brown people in GOP circles, but I really don’t get the long term play here. You know, seeing how brown people are making up a bigger and bigger slice of the electoral pie. Ah well, fuck it. It just feels so good.

The Arizona Department of Education recently began telling school districts that teachers whose spoken English it deems to be heavily accented or ungrammatical must be removed from classes for students still learning English.

State education officials say the move is intended to ensure that students with limited English have teachers who speak the language flawlessly. But some school principals and administrators say the department is imposing arbitrary fluency standards that could undermine students by thinning the ranks of experienced educators.

-Ian

Isn’t It Striking?!

Jonah Goldberg really is a surprisingly stupid human.

Obviously, people disagree about stuff, and certain policy issues are complex enough that errors of perception or interpretation are probably inevitable on a fairly wide scale.  But, look, here you’ve got one of your leading young conservative intellectuals approvingly reprinting an email that might as well be a Crayon scrawl drawn by two blindfolded children.  And he’s either too ignorant or too lazy to bother noticing.

—Jason

So We Stole and Drank Champagne

—Jason

Just Talking About the Timing, Baby

Well, it makes about as much sense as his “unions are responsible for a disaster at a non-union coal mine” theory, though it’s a bit too Twelve Monkeys for my taste.

—Jason

Update (Ian) – All over it already, baby.

QOTD

“Every asshole who ever chanted ‘Drill baby drill’ should have to report to the Gulf coast today for cleanup duty,” – Bill Maher.

What a fucking mess.

These are the situations that our mindless political discourse get us into. Stupidity has consequences.

-Ian

Drill, Baby, Drill, Again

Man…

The worst-case scenario for the broken and leaking well gushing oil into the Gulf of Mexico would be the loss of the wellhead currently restricting the flow to 5,000 barrels — or 210,000 gallons per day.

If the wellhead is lost, oil could leave the well at a much greater rate, perhaps up to 150,000 barrels — or more than 6 million gallons per day — based on government data showing daily production at another deepwater Gulf well.

By comparison, the Exxon Valdez spill was 11 million gallons total. The Gulf spill could end up dumping the equivalent of 4 Exxon Valdez spills per week.

Without even getting into the whys and wherefores of culpability, let’s just say that this underscores the fact that there are usually a number of reasons for arriving at public policy decisions.  That is, there may or may not be a substantive benefit to off-shore drilling (and my sense is that the benefit is minimal) but there’s a price to be paid, too, and usually when you dig down beneath the idiocy of certain political actors screaming non-sensical slogans at people who know absolutely nothing about the underlying issue, you find that there’s a pretty sensible reason, why, say, states might not want to open their coastal waters to this sort of industry.

—Jason

Everything Is A Conspiracy

This is pretty fucking stupid, even for the gas bag.

“I want to get back to the timing of the blowing up, the explosion out there in the Gulf of Mexico of this oil rig…. Now, lest we forget, ladies and gentlemen, the carbon tax bill, cap and trade that was scheduled to be announced on Earth Day. I remember that. And then it was postponed for a couple of days later after Earth Day, and then of course immigration has now moved in front of it. But this bill, the cap-and-trade bill, was strongly criticized by hardcore environmentalist whackos because it supposedly allowed more offshore drilling and nuclear plants, nuclear plant investment. So, since they’re sending SWAT teams down there, folks, since they’re sending SWAT teams to inspect the other rigs, what better way to head off more oil drilling, nuclear plants, than by blowing up a rig? I’m just noting the timing here.”

-Ian

Friday’s Random Ten

I wouldn’t go out alone into America.

10.  Girl Sailor – The Shins

9.  New Age – Velvet Underground

8.  Ashamed of the Story I Told – The National

7.  Giving Up the Gun – Vampire Weekend

6.  Drops in the River – Fleet Foxes

5.  Bling (Confessions of a King) – The Killers

4.  I Made It – Jay-Z

3.  Ballad of a Comeback Kid – The New Pornographers

2.  Whiplash – Metallica

1.  This Is My Story, This Is My Song – Thelonious Monk

Bonus:

—Jason

Wanker of the Day

Barack Obama.

There’s a surprising amount of bullshit out there about off-shore drilling.  No idea why.  It’s not as though the underlying issues are that difficult to grasp.

—Jason

She’s Going To Be POTUS

She’s got the Nugent vote locked up. Game over.

“We who are driven to be assets to our families, communities and our beloved country connect with the principles that Sarah Palin embodies. We know that bureaucrats and, even more, Fedzilla, are not the solution; they are the problem. I’d be proud to share a moose-barbecue campfire with the Palin family anytime, so long as I can shoot the moose.”

-Ian

Skeleton Boy

Let us dance.

—Jason

Drill, Baby, Drill

This sucks.

As a way to rile up the dirty hippies and piss off liberals, drill, baby, drill is pretty much gold.  But if we’re going to expand off-shore drilling we’re going to have to address the reality that these sorts of environmental catastrophes are an unavoidable part of the deal.

—Jason

Wind Farm

But I still didn’t get a pony!

“After nine years of regulatory review, the federal government gave the green light Wednesday to the nation’s first offshore wind farm, a sprawling project off the coast of Cape Cod.”

-Ian

File Under – It’s Working

I suppose making fun of this shit-stain-crazy-man is bit unfair at this point… but I’m kind of petty and mean, so fuck it.

“[Former Rep. Tom Tancredo] claimed that Obama is purposefully withholding his birth certificate in order to fuel birther conspiracies that make the right wing look nuts.”

-Ian

Everyone Hates John McCain Watch

Here, you animals.

I hope you’re happy, tearing down a great American this way.

—Jason

QOTD

Huh, I bet this will help with the outreach.

Pat Bertroche, a Republican congressional hopeful:

“I think we should catch ’em, we should document ’em, make sure we know where they are and where they are going…I actually support microchipping them. I can micro-chip my dog so I can find it. Why can’t I microchip an illegal? That’s not a popular thing to say, but it’s a lot cheaper than building a fence they can tunnel under.”

I just can’t figure out why the GOP is losing the minority vote.

-Ian

Cots

They’re breaking out the cots tonight in the World’s Greatest Deliberative Body [tm].  They’re doing this because no one wants to embrace a handful of simple rule changes that would help the body to function like an actual legislature.  And the reason no one wants to embrace filibuster reform is that no one wants to be the guy to give away his party’s power to make sure the Senate remains broken the next time his party is in the minority.

Make sense?

—Jason

Fun with Initialisms!

Chuck Norris (via Whiskey Fire, who owns the Chuck Norris beat):

NRA might mean National Rifle Association, but it also means to me, “Never Remove (your) Arms.”

Of course, removing the first arm is easy.  But how do you remove the second?

—Jason

Full Stops

—Jason

I Live on the Frozen Surface of a Fireball

—Jason

QotD

George Will:

Arizonans should not be judged disdainfully and from a distance by people whose closest contacts with Hispanics are with fine men and women who trim their lawns and put plates in front of them at restaurants, not with illegal immigrants passing through their back yards at 3 a.m.

Please make it stop.

—Jason

Just Sayin’

Shorter Tea Party:

A moderate Health Care law debated for decades, ran on in a Presidential election, passed through countless committees, cuts the deficit, paid for, passed by a majority in both house of congress: ISLAMOFASCISMNAZIOBAMACAREYEARGGGGGGGGGGGGG!!!!

A radical police state policy that is surely going to cause racial profiling, secondary citizen status, and is the epitome of big government tyranny: (chirp, chirp).

-Ian

Just Can’t Help Themselves Watch

Yes, the Dems are probably going to lose seats this election. No, this type of shit isn’t going to help the GOP become anything more than a tiny regional party in the future. No matter how stoopid it is politically, they just can’t help themselves.

-Ian

Head-Fake

Awesome:

And we finally have some clue as to what loophole the RNC is using here, according to a GOP House aide. The law applies to mailings that have “census” on the envelope. The RNC’s mailing doesn’t: the word “census” appears through the window of the envelope but not on the envelope. Clever, uh?

Nothing lines up more neatly with an ethos of personal responsibility and honesty than using childish letter-of-the-law dodges to get around federal law.

—Jason

Deep Thought

I wish we could have nothing but stories about Lindsey Graham’s little shit fit.

—Jason