It’s the 150th anniversary of the resolution of the Vicksburg campaign. I only wish we could round up General Grant and the boys and send them to liberate some other places, like maybe Kansas.
Good Luck, Egypt
I hope the coup paves the way for a better government.
I take it cable news, especially CNN, is being slammed for ignoring Egypt and providing live coverage of the Zimmerman trial instead. I haven’t been watching, but I understand it’s a messy business. One witness who tried to testify via Skype got Skype-bombed.
Crazy in Carolina
North Carolina is challenging South Carolina for the Crazy title. Yesterday the Senate tacked a package of abortion restrictions onto a Sharia law bill. That does strike me as the quintessential Republican bill these days.
The state Senate was poised to consider a foolish measure, predicated on a common far-right conspiracy theory, intended to undermine Sharia law in North Carolina courts. Late in the afternoon, however, Republican state senators launched a legislative ambush, quickly amending the Sharia law bill to include sweeping new anti-abortion measures, intended to close clinics and prevent Planned Parenthood from providing legal abortion services in the state. . . .
. . . And let’s also not brush past the ideological irony too quickly. Republican state senators are so terrified by the prospect of religious law being considered in North Carolina that they’re pushing a legislative fix — which just so happens to include a provision shaped by Republican state senators’ religious beliefs.
But that’s not even the craziest thing North Carolina has done lately.
With changes to its unemployment law taking effect this weekend, North Carolina not only is cutting benefits for those who file new claims, it will become the first state disqualified from a federal compensation program for the long-term jobless.
State officials adopted the package of benefit cuts and increased taxes for businesses in February, a plan designed to accelerate repayment of a $2.5 billion federal debt. Like many states, North Carolina had racked up the debt by borrowing from Washington after its unemployment fund was drained by jobless benefits during the Great Recession.
The changes go into effect Sunday for North Carolina, which has the country’s fifth-worst jobless rate. The cuts on those who make unemployment claims on or after that day will disqualify the state from receiving federally funded Emergency Unemployment Compensation. That money kicks in after the state’s period of unemployment compensation — now shortened from up to six months to no more than five — runs out. The EUC program is available to long-term jobless in all states. But keeping the money flowing includes a requirement that states can’t cut average weekly benefits.
Because North Carolina leaders cut average weekly benefits for new claims, about 170,000 workers whose state benefits expire this year will lose more than $700 million in EUC payments, the U.S. Labor Department said.
How does this make any sense at all? This was a Southern state that prided itself on its technology sector, its colleges and universities, and the fact that it really wasn’t very much like its neighbor to the South. Now, it’s behaving like Mississippi on a bad day.
David Graham explains “How North Carolina Became the Wisconsin of 2013.” Other brilliant moves:
- The state legislature is trying to lower corporate and individual income tax and flatten the tax code.
A Senate bill would not only open the state to fracking, but would also allow the frackers to keep their fracking fluid secret. - The state legislature is trying to repeal a bill intended to provide some protection against racially biased juries for African Americans accused of capital crimes.
- North Carolina is one of the states shooting itself in the foot by rejecting Medicaid expansion and the federal dollars attached to it.
- The state legislature also is busily passing voter restriction laws.
- But they are loosening already lose guns laws. They even intend to allow concealed carry in bars.
- The state is pushing a school voucher plan and cutting preschool funding.
- And the state wants to end public financing for judicial elections, because when corporations can buy judicial elections, corporations get better judgments.
Graham also says,
While much of North Carolina remains conservative — as the 2012 election showed — there is a strong concentration of much more left-leaning voters in the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill area, and they’ve reacted angrily to the push. In a series of weekly demonstrations named “Moral Mondays,” protestors have descended on the state legislature to show their displeasure and, often, be arrested: nearly 500 people have been arrested since the first such rally on April 29. (Last week on The Atlantic, Win Bassett followed the Rev. Tuck Taylor as she was arrested at the June 17 Moral Monday.)
In other news — today is the 150th anniversary of Pickett’s Charge.
150 Years Ago
On this date in 1863, in Gettysburg — Confederate Gen. John Bell Hood attacks th Devil’s Den. The 15th and 47th Alabama regiments stormed up Big Round Top, only to be told they had to take Little Round Top. And there they were routed by the 20th Maine, under the command of Col. Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain. Horrific fighting in the Peach Orchard and the Wheat Field cost many lives, but the day ended with the Confederates having gained little for their trouble.
Be sure to read “The Battle to Gain 200 Seconds” about the sacrifice of 1st Minnesota and “A Regiment Is Sacrificed at Gettysburg” about the 134th New York.
Pundits Being Stupid
It’s not just rightie pundits who fall into the stupid pit. Sometimes I wonder where people keep their heads.
Barry Friedman and Dahlia Lithwick wonder what progressives will possibly do with themselves now that we appear to be cruising to victory on marriage equality.
But did you notice that, on the way to this victory, the left, as a movement, seemed to abandon almost everything else for which it once stood? That while gay marriage rose like cream to the top of the liberal agenda, the rest of what the left once cherished was shoved aside, ignored, or “it’s complicated†to oblivion? …
… Progressives were once unapologetically pro-choice, committed to the idea that women would control their own bodies and destiny, and that the government should stay out of it. They insisted that women and their physicians should make intimate health care decisions without the genial assistance of state and federal legislators and their transvaginal probes. Then along came so-called partial-birth abortion and pictures of late-term fetuses, and all of a sudden the storyline shifted to killing babies, as if killing babies was what anyone ever wanted to do. Still, progressives, pushing their own babies in their Bugaboos, came to doubt their convictions on abortion, and abortion doctors, and even on Planned Parenthood clinics, which are often the focus of angry demonstrations.
Now, mind you, this was posted on Slate yesterday. This was posted less than a week after Wendy Davis and her pink sneakers had become our fair-haired (literally) darling.
Similarly, Friedman and Lithwick complain that progressives have abandoned the causes of labor, income inequality, gun control (that was true until Sandy Hook), supporting public schools and keeping prayer out of them, and opposing the death penalty. I repeat, they are not saying that liberals have been less successful at making progress on these lines; they are saying progressives aren’t even interested in those causes any more.
Maybe we should send them a recording of last year’s Democratic National Convention. People care passionately about this stuff. And the Dems, bless them, are finally growing some spine in regard to reproduction rights, and many of them are getting stronger on strengthening the safety net. And it hasn’t been that long since the Madison, Wisconsin protests, has it?
Yes, we aren’t making as much progress on these other issues as we have on gay rights, for a host of reasons. And there’s been much more focus on marriage equality in recent months because, dammit, we seemed to be winning for a change.
But I don’t see us lefties abandoning these other issues. Prioritizing, maybe. And a lot of the action has been at state and not national level. But you go where the fight is.
Seriously, where do people keep their heads? I thought Lithwick, at least, was smarter than this.
The other column today that makes me want to smack the writer is in Politico, so yeah, it’s Politico. But Maggie Haberman is wringing her hands over what the poor Dems will do for a candidate in 2016 if Hillary Clinton doesn’t run. And I say, shut up shut up shut up shut up about whether Hillary Clinton or anybody else will run in 2016. After we went through 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, and part of 2008 being told that Hillary Clinton will be the Dem nominee in 2008, it’s inevitable, there is no one else who has a prayer of stopping her, you’d think that the pundits would have grown a bit more cautious about giving her the Miss Inevitability award yet again.
But no. They can’t let it go. Hillary Clinton’s political career is the crack cocaine of beltway pundits.
Weenies of Wonder
What is it with the compulsion to show off Mr. Happy? I really don’t understand.
In the News
First, let us send consoling thoughts to the families of the 19 firefighters who died in Arizona yesterday. The dangerous heat wave in the southwest continues. It was just a hair under 130 degrees F in Death Valley.
Egypt is acting out again. Righties blame Obama.
News for 150 years ago today — Outnumbered and disorganized Union troops retreat back through Gettysburg as Confederates advance. The Union troops are reinforced and positioned on Cemetery Hill. Confederate Lt. General Richard Ewell chooses not to attack the Union lines.
The Trial About the Trial
Well, it’s looking like the George Zimmerman verdict probably will come down to how much racism may lurk in the hearts of the jurors. Much snarking has been aimed at Rachel Jeantel, the young woman who was on the phone with Trayvon Martin until minutes before he was killed. Her testimony has been called a “train wreck.” Zimmerman supporters made much of her testimony that Martin called Zimmerman a “creepy-ass cracker.” Like that proves something.
This is the only bit of the testimony that I’ve seen. I say it’s purely in the eye of the beholder to determine who comes off worse, Ms. Jeantel or the creepy-ass cracker defense attorney questioning her.
Hey, the question was retarded. The attorney seemed to be insinuating that Trayvon Martin was attacking George Zimmerman while he was on the phone — good trick, that — and lying to Ms. Jeantel about it. Huh?
What we’re not hearing as much about is that the white and properly articulate neighbors have been giving conflicting testimony.
The boy in the dark-colored hooded sweatshirt straddled the man in red, doing a mixed-martial-arts-style “ground-and-pound.â€
Or the boy in the hoodie was on the bottom, crying out for help.
I don’t much care who was on top. The central issues of the trail are summed up pretty well here —
The big question hanging over the trial is whether it was an unarmed Martin who claimed his self-defense rights against an armed adult stranger following him in the dark, and whether Zimmerman waived his self-defense rights when he made the decision to pursue Trayvon after noting to a 911 dispatcher that “these [guys] always get away.â€
Yes. However,
Yet the potential for Jeantel’s testimony to illuminate that central question appeared to sink beneath a wave of commentary about aesthetics, as Christina Coleman summarizes in a Global Grind article called “Why Black People Understand Rachel Jeantel.â€
Fortunately, the jury is sequestered, so they aren’t being influenced by the trial about the trial.
Mansplaining Explained
I’m glad to see I’m not the only one wondering where Jonathan Chait left his brain yesterday. Kathy Kattenburg writes,
Plainly, being a male liberal (or kinda sorta liberal-libertarian) on abortion rights does not, sad to say, mean that the pro-choice part overpowers the testosterone-induced need to mansplain women’s lives to them.
This is what Chait said, regarding Rick Perry’s comments about Wendy Davis, that pissed me (and Kathy) off:
The immediate liberal reaction is that Perry was “attack[ing] her motives and her experiences,†or “dismissing her as an unwed, teen mother.†But Perry is not attacking Davis here. Perry is pointing to her life as a success. His comments are tantamount to a liberal arguing that Ted Cruz’s family history shows why we need more immigration.
Chait goes on to lecture us pro-reproductive rights folks about how anti-rights people have a right to their opinion too, which I suppose makes it perfectly acceptable for them to force their views on the rest of us by closing abortion clinics.
But it stuns me that Chait and some other generally leftie males are oblivious to the belittling, condescending, patronizing, insult to Davis at the heart of Perry’s remarks. One more time — where does any man get off dictating to any woman what she should have learned from her experiences as a woman and mother? Whether the woman was married or single? Whether she chose an abortion or not? Exactly how does white skin and a penis signify all-pervading wisdom?
In case any of you still don’t see it, here are some resources on “mansplaining.”
A Cultural History of Mansplaining
Mansplaining 101: How to Discuss Politics and Feminism Without Acting Like a Jackass
Men Explain Things to Me: Facts Didn’t Get in Their Way
This is such a common experience for a woman — dealing with men who assume they know better than you do about everything, including your own area of expertise, because. And then if you come out and tell them, y’know, I actually know quite a lot about this, and I would prefer you not instruct me unless I ask you a question — you get this oh, isn’t she cute smirk, and then they go on explaining things you already know as if you were six years old. Or — my personal favorite — we are told that maybe people would listen to us more if we were nicer. It’s maddening. And allegedly liberal men do it too sometimes.
Rick Perry Is the Bigger Asshole
Most of your know my Bigger Asshole theory of effective protesting, but here it is again — in a confrontation between protesters and those being protested, whichever is the bigger asshole loses. That’s because the goal is to sway public opinion, and public opinion will turn against the bigger asshole.
Today Texas Gov. Rick Perry stepped into a big ol’ pile of assholery in a speech to a National Fetus People Conference:
PERRY: In fact, even the woman who filibustered the Senate the other day was born into difficult circumstances. She was the daughter of a single woman, she was a teenage mother herself. She managed to eventually graduate from Harvard Law School and serve in the Texas senate. It is just unfortunate that she hasn’t learned from her own example that every life must be given a chance to realize its full potential and that every life matters.
Yes, Mr. Oops has taken it on himself to lecture a woman about what she should have learned from her life experiences, experiences that he himself never had. The Patriarchy speaks.
‘
(I believe I speak for many women when I say that nothing pisses us off more than a man lecturing us about what we should think based on his notions of who we are. It dismisses us as less than persons. It’s the male chauvinist equivalent of the antebellum plantation owner saying his nigras jus’ loves the massah.)
Kay:
Rick Perry is very disappointed that a grown woman doesn’t understand her own life and experiences in exactly the same way he and the attendees of the National Right To Life Convention do. First he defines what her life means, and then sorrowfully recounts how she just hasn’t learned the right lessons from his definition of her life.
Y’know, it’s a wonder that man can walk and talk and dress himself, going through life as he is with his head shoved up his ass. Digby and Shakesis also, um, comment. However, somebody needs to explain a few things to Jonathan Chait. He ain’t gettin’ it.
In the short run, the bill Wendy Davis blocked on Wednesday will almost certainly pass into law eventually. And wingnut state legislators will continue to pass transvaginal ultrasound requirements and defund Planned Parenthood and find ways to close clinics for the wommenfolks’ own good, you know. Because they can’t leave well enough alone (see previous post about GOP crack).
But in the long run — well, I do believe I feel the turning of the tide. And I’m not alone. See:
On Wendy Davis, the Supreme Court, and Speaking Out As Women
Wendy Davis’ abortion law filibuster may be a ‘Texas Spring’
http://nymag.com/thecut/2013/06/wendy-davis-scotus-and-speaking-out-as-women.html?test=true
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-is-wendy-davis-abortion-law-filibuster-a-texas-spring-20130627,0,6885101.story
Wendy Davis, Feminist Superhero
Yes, Rick Perry and the Texas troglodytes will pass their bill. Please proceed, governor. This is just getting started.