Sunday punditry.
In just that week, the Party of No’s intransigent campaign of obstruction and obfuscation went belly up. The Obama White House moved to get its act together with an alacrity lacking in its health care campaign, abruptly adding Thursday’s New York speech to the president’s schedule. The bipartisan Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission at last issued its first subpoena — to Moody’s, one of the rating agencies that for a fat fee slapped AAA ratings on the toxic garbage Goldman packaged and sold to benighted suckers on the other end of a huge bet placed by a favored client, the hedge fund player John Paulson.
Salutary as this rush of events is, it still adds up so far to just one small step for mankind.
Thomas Friedman has a few unreal observations about the tea party in a "pretend they're rational and care about the environment the way I do" waste of a column. The irony is that Friedman dismisses immigration reform, but that's a topic that the real tea party actually cares about - in the wrong way (remember, these are hard core Bush supporters.) The environment is not a concern of theirs. This column is not a concern of ours.
When the World Series champion Yankees visit the White House on Monday to meet President Obama, they will continue a tradition, stretching back a century and a half, of baseball players mixing with commanders in chief.
The Climate Rally 2010 takes place on the National Mall today.
The Climate Rally will also feature live music from Sting, John Legend, The Roots, Jimmy Cliff, Passion Pit, Bob Weir, Willie Colón, Joss Stone, Robert Randolph, Patrick Stump, Mavis Staples, Booker T, Honor Society and Tao Rodriguez-Seeger.
AP:
Some 2,000 people have protested in Phoenix against a tough immigration enforcement measure signed into law today by Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer.
Demonstrators say the bill, which makes it a crime under state law to be in the country illegally, will lead to civil rights abuses. The law also requires police officers to question people about their immigration status if there is reason to suspect they are illegal immigrants.
Somehow I don't think the immigration protests and Earth Day rally will get the same media attention as the hundreds of tea party protestors. Maybe here's why:
The real problem with extremism as an attention-grabber isn’t that we don’t know what to do about it. The real problem is that it works. By knocking down the Twin Towers and announcing a constant stream of threats, the Islamic radicals got and continue to get publicity out of proportion to their numbers — just as the Tea Partiers have been dominating the national airwaves even though their ranks, according to survey data, constitute no more than 13 percent of the American public. Similarly, Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh are very well remunerated for their high-decibel hate. In other words, we may say we hate fanaticism, but we pay attention to it and may even reward it.
National Journal bloggers poll:
The prospect of the GOP aligning itself with the Tea Party movement seems to carry a few more questions for right-leaning bloggers than it did seven months ago.
In this week's NationalJournal.com Bloggers Poll, a 56 percent majority on the right says the party should align itself somewhat closely and 22 percent say very closely. That intensity of support is roughly reversed from the last time we asked this question: Last September, 50 percent of the respondents said very closely and 29 percent said somewhat closely. Now as then, however, big majorities say some alignment is a good thing.
Among left-leaners, a 53 percent majority says the GOP should align itself closely, up from 33 percent last time. Almost 30 percent say the GOP shouldn't do it at all, down from a 47 percent plurality seven months ago.
Right and left bloggers sense the good ship Tea Party is taking on water.
Posted: 2010-04-25 07:31:57
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