....on whatever crosses my mind

Quote of the Day - October 5, 2009

Roger Cohen's op-ed in today's issue of The New York Times, which dissects the fundamental different way that the U.S. and Europe view health care, is a beautiful, subtly persuasive bit of writing.

To wit:

One fundamental reason a public option — yes, “option,” not single-payer monopoly — is needed in the United States is to jump-start the idea that basic health care is a moral obligation rather than a financial opportunity.

And:

A public commitment to universal coverage is not character-sapping but character-affirming. Medicare did not make America less American. Individualism is more “rugged” when housed in a healthy body.

Indeed.

Quote of the Day - September 17, 2009

Taking on liberal and black cowardice on racism, Brotherpeacemaker drops profound:

The black community has lost the will to even control the conversation of racism. Racism is now defined by people like Mr. Limbaugh and Mr. Beck who earn multi million dollar salaries by catering to people who belong to a political party void of any real racial inclusion.

Indeed.

Quote of the Day - July 20, 2009

Jamelle beautifully dismantles Ross Douthat's (quasi)anti-affirmative action argument in today's New York Times:

Contra Douthat, affirmative action (and especially race-based affirmative action) will be necessary for as long as our political institutions refuse to address systemic discrimination in any meaningful way.

Indeed.

Quote of the Day - June 30, 2009

Since I was traveling, I didn't get to see the BET Awards.  Though I haven't watched BET for longer than 3 minutes at a time in over a decade, I had hoped the tribute to Mike would be worth my time.

I'm told it wasn't.  Shame. 

Luvvie wrote an open letter to BET because of their foolishness and it's a riot!  To wit:

Isweahfo Queen Yawnce's liquid leggings and one-piece spandex that BET is on my permanent sh*t list, next to beets, horror movies and clowns. iRebuke you in the name of Diva, Halo & Ego to the pits of Dereon Hades w/ 3-headed dog in the finest kanekalon hairhat.

The single funniest thing I've read in a while.

Quote of the Day - June 29, 2009

Richard Kim writes a piece about why we should remember all of who Michael Jackson was, warts and all:

Our fascination with Whack-o Jack-o has never been only, or even primarily, with his prodigious skills. It was with the way he personified our culture's most central ambitions to whiteness, immortality, wealth, real estate and fame. Lodged somewhere between the superhuman and the alien, aspiration and disgust, Jackson was a grotesque reflection of our collective desires.

Yea, I think that's right (minus the needless use of "Whack-o Jack-o").

Quote of the Day - June 23, 2009

The fellas over at The League of Ordinary Gentleman have been all up and through my blog lately.  I am aware of this and am very okay wit it.  At this point, LOG is my favorite blog to read along with my boy Ta-Nehisi Coates.

Here is Freddie goin hard at how useless the national conversation of race has become: 

But those who immediately and harshly react to any suggestion of racial impropriety don’t want any discussion at all. And that’s what a really huge amount of our racial dialogue, at present, amounts to, a sustained campaign to whittle down the parameters of appropriate debate, and to cast anyone who alleges racism or something like it out of the bounds of respectability. We don’t live in a post-race society, and we aren’t moving towards one, but we are moving towards a post-race-discussion society. That’s an incredibly dangerous thing.

Precisely.  Hats off to you, Freddie.

Quote of the Day - June 18, 2009

Freddie over at the steller League of Ordinary Gentleman makes a passionate plea for anti-health care reform folks to take a look at themselves, saying:

I believe that for people in the most powerful economy in the history of the world to lack for access to health care is an obscenity. I believe it makes folly of our claims to be a moral nation and undermines the very notion of democratic community. I don’t expect people who don’t agree to change their minds. But we are not asking this for no reason; we are asking this because of real and devastating suffering. Even I don’t believe that this suffering is the only meaningful part of the discussion. I know in my heart that a discussion that fails to interrogate it as an essential fact is as useless as it is immoral.

Nuf said.

Quote of the Day - June 11, 2009

William Jelani Cobb compares Obama's incrementalism on gay rights to that of Kennedy with civil rights in the 60s, and warns:

The president would do well to define this moment by taking immediate action to repeal "don't ask, don't tell" or ensure adoption rights for homosexual, bisexual and transgender families. Kennedy believed that promoting civil rights would jeopardize other aspects of his domestic agenda during a national crisis. Barack Obama has a broader set of crises to resolve than any president in modern history, but that is not a rationale for inaction on this issue.

Then he goads us, the people:

Ultimately, the gay rights movement will have to learn something that the civil rights movement learned again and again during the 20th century -- it is often necessary to force the hand of even your allies to achieve your goals.

Indeed.

Quote of the Day - June 10, 2009

E.D. Kain over at my new favorite blog, The League of Ordinary Gentleman, drops rational on the health care reform debate:

I suppose, beyond all this, medicine - like education, or crime - seems to be an area wherein profits ought to be secondary...We need to reevaluate how we treat this problem.  Not everything having to do with the public or societal or communal good needs to be labeled communist.

Indeed.

Quote of the Day - June 8, 2009

Matt Yglesias from ThinkProgress, in responding to the Right's whining about people calling their racist acts racist, nails it:

Because, again, the contemporary right’s main view on race is that actual racism against non-white people is only a tiny problem compared with the vast social crisis that allegedly exists around people being vigilant against racism.

Dude - we just need more people saying this.