Got a nice e-mail from fellow ex-Chicagoan Tom Elia, who runs an excellent and aptly-named Austin, TX-based blog called The New Editor. You must check it out. Tom writes about and today links to a whole lotta good stuff, including this piece I had missed. The NYT's David Brooks picks up on the Joel Kotkin meme of Red America breeders as a growing force in national politics.
Brooks calls these folk "natalists" (I like that), and writes:
Natalists are associated with red America, but they're not launching a jihad. The differences between them and people on the other side of the cultural or political divide are differences of degree, not kind. Like most Americans, but perhaps more anxiously, they try to shepherd their kids through supermarket checkouts lined with screaming Cosmo or Maxim cover lines. Like most Americans, but maybe more so, they suspect that we won't solve our social problems or see improvements in our schools as long as many kids are growing up in barely functioning families.
More links for a Tuesday morning, then it's down to the Tenzing Momo herbal apothecary at Pike Place Market for chopped licorice root, peppermint, lemon verbena and kava; plus a nice, nubile, First Night of Hannukah roast beef from Don & Joe's, Seattle's finest meat market.
At his blog Au Fait, a computer progammer living deep in heart of Red America (Lynchburg, VA) argues we're not a divided nation in the least: it's just that Dems are letting the wrong folk hold the microphone. You're sure right about that last part, Jeff, and if the new U.S. Senate Democratic Leader, Harry Reid, can somehow arrange for the silencing of the Michael Moore-Whoopi Goldberg-Alec Baldwin wing of the party, then I'll KNOW he's a master politician. Anyway, warm up that ackee and salt cod for me, OK? Or maybe jerk chicken? (I'll bring the Lancer's).
At Sunbreak City, Seattle's Tough Love Democrat Doug Anderson has some sage words for his party:
The Democrats must lower the mote and leave Crazy Castle and wade into the areas of their traditional expertise. And they must tell themselves this: The bulls*** stops. We've got one last shot to do something real or we are goners.. Now go into the schools and do something to make a difference. Figure out a way to make American kids more proficient in math at younger ages. A whole generation of Asian graduates are poised and ready to eat our technological lunch. Take another look at the welfare system you put in place during the Great Society and try to get some real results. Bush has got his hands full in the international sphere; take some domestic issue and get real results. And stop sitting around accusing Republicans of wanting to see 9 year olds selling flowers on street corners at midnight.
You'll have to click through to the link to see exactly how Doug weaves some classic Chinese poetry into this very same post.
At Gut Rumbles, the genuine Southern bon vivant and addled miscreant Rob explains why steroid-enhanced baseball sluggers are of no concern to him. I think he has a point. If botox and boob jobs for actors, why not steriods for athletes? A freak show is a freak show is a freak show.
Rob has a highly comestible grill recipe, to boot.
Posted by Matt Rosenberg at December 7, 2004 10:29 AM
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I don't know whether or not I would describe myself as a "genuine Southern bon vivant and addled miscreant," but... [Read More]
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» 12/7 Blogsplosion from The Write Wing Conspiracy
So I'm curious: is doing these in the late evening hours a good idea, or would it be better to do these before I do the major posts? An open question to be sure, but unfortunately my options were limited today, so stop your whining and read up: [Read More]
Tracked on December 8, 2004 12:20 AM