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There is nothing telling, interesting, or indicative about two men acting out at a couple of awkwardly staged performances. The way millions of people react to them, on the other hand, matters very much. […] If you’re like me, you’ll see this reaction as a collective insistence on deference to authority, a pathetic inability to tolerate the meekest of incivilities. Either way, whatever it might mean when 270 representatives spend valuable time excoriating a single man for a two-word declarative statement, it probably doesn’t have much to do with the triumph of individualism over conformity.
—Kerry Howley on David Brooks on the decline of civility.
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Stormtroopers reminisce about death star (via jwz)
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electric stimulus to face -test3 ( Daito Manabe ) (via daito)
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Nirvana vs Rick Astley - Never Gonna Give Your Teen Spirit up (via Justin James Reed)
I am shocked and amazed.
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Surprising to stumble across the photo source for Summerteeth.
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[C]ontrary to Rep Wilson, the bills under consideration really won’t give health insurance to undocumented immigrants. But […] this seems regrettable to me—undocumented immigrants are people, too!
Obviously, it’s politically impossible for elected officials to take any other stand on this immigrant issue, but it’s a really unfortunate and inhumane posture they’re adopted.
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Matthew Yglesias » Immigrants and Health Care
Exactly. Somewhere around ¼ of the uninsured in the US are immigrants, and the plans we have for remaking the US healthcare industry completely ignores them (except when they’re added to the total number of uninsured to SELL the plan.) Should someone die on the street because their papers aren’t in order? Apparently Joe Wilson AND Barack Obama can agree on that.
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The notion that dissent, temperately voiced, was in principle out of place seems to me odd. This wasn’t a church service. It wasn’t a ceremonial occasion to celebrate some event inspiring or requiring national unity. It was a highly political address about a passionately contentious topic. It was laden with sentences carefully crafted to elicit applause from Democrats, while the TV cameras could show the Republicans sitting in surly silence. Why is silence thought the only proper means of dissent ?
—Barry, who makes the excellent point that, while Joe Wilson wasn’t the most courteous of listeners, we all have the right to express our opinion. (via newsweek)
