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The Salon columnist makes the point that some of those crying out in opposition to affirmative action have their soap box solely because of affirmative action, in the form of nepotism. Jenna Bush Hager, Luke Russert, Liz Cheney, Megan McCain, Jonah Goldberg…the list goes on for quite a while. I got into Virginia Tech because of affirmative action, so it's working out just fine for me.
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A downside of solar power: it requires that a lot of surface area be covered in photovoltaic arrays, kept open to the sky. A downside of roads: they require that a lot of surface area be covered, with the area cleared of trees. But combine these two great flavors and you've got a huge amount of this country's square footage ready to be converted into a distributed power generation facility.
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I often point out how much good that Nixon did for the country and (other than that little Watergate business) for the image of the Republican Party. He's tied with Teddy Roosevelt for the most environmental president. He was a Republican, but he wasn't angry about it. Compared to the modern, far-right Republican Party, the man was a Democrat.
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The country wants to be the Hollywood of the Middle East, but they also want to remain fundamentalist. So you can make a movie, but only if there's no drinking, swearing, exposed skin, or anything else in violation of fundamentalist Islam. That's not really working out for them.
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Media outlets don't have the budget to force courtrooms to hold open, fair trials. And if any of my fellow bloggers taking up that fight on the behalf of the public, it's news to me.
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RE: affirmative action…EVERYBODY got where they got through some kind of boost from someone somewhere. if you’ve ended up in a good place, you got some kind of a break or an advantage that others didn’t get. maybe it was where your parents decided to raise you (the suburb with the well-funded schools rather than the city neighborhood with the crumbling infrastructure). maybe it was getting into college based on a legacy admit. maybe it was getting your first job at the business owned by your mom’s friend. maybe it was paying for college with a guaranteed student loan. we all get breaks. no one rises to the top PURELY based on merit.
it’s only when its minorities getting a publicly-funded boost, all the non-minorities who like to think they’ve been bootstrapping since they were born go berserk.
I particularly liked this bit from Greenwald (after he lists all the kids of powerful cons and neocons): “Just to underscore a very important, related point: all of the above-listed people are examples of America’s Great Meritocracy, having achieved what they have solely on the basis of their talent, skill and hard work — The American Way. By contrast, Sonia Sotomayor — who grew up in a Puerto Rican family in Bronx housing projects; whose father had a third-grade education, did not speak English and died when she was 9; whose mother worked as a telephone operator and a nurse; and who then became valedictorian of her high school, summa cum laude at Princeton, a graduate of Yale Law School, and ultimately a Supreme Court Justice — is someone who had a whole litany of unfair advantages handed to her and is the poster child for un-American, merit-less advancement.”
That Krugman article and the last Bill Moyer’s show just reiterate to me that we have a captive government. Maybe the libertarians have it right: we need to eviscerate the government in order to save it.
I didn’t know anyone needed affirmative action to get into Virginia Tech. I thought they just took everybody.
Zing!