Oliver Willis

At Ole Miss there’s been some controversy about people chanting “the south will rise again” at football games because THIS IS THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY AND IT’S NOT COOL TO CHEER ON SLAVERY, so of course now the KKK is going to protest at Ole Miss.
Can we just give the south back to the Brits?

Winner.

This story is like a text version of that Sarah Mclachlan ad for the ASPCA that makes me want to change the channel every time it runs because its so freaking depressing.
Oreo, a pit bull mix, was hailed as a miracle dog when she survived being hurled off a Brooklyn rooftop last summer. She had [...]

So today I went to what is effectively the town hall for Takoma Park in order to get a passport (Sidebar: I had one when I was a kid but it expired, the only international travel I do is to Jamaica and I used to be able to go there using just a birth certificate/driver’s [...]

The conventional wisdom, right now, is that health care reform won’t pass in the senate.
Previously the CW was
Health care reform couldn’t pass the House
Obama couldn’t beat Clinton for the nomination
Democrats couldn’t take back the House and the Senate in 2006
America wouldn’t elect a Catholic president
Dewey had Truman beat
The allies couldn’t defeat the Nazis
No way the [...]

Link
Multiple deaths and multiple injuries have resulted from shootings at Fort Hood, Texas, according to a Fort Hood spokesman.
At least seven people are dead and as many as 20 are wounded, CNN affiliate KXXV reported, citing a Fort Hood spokesman. One person is in custody in connection with the incident, it said.
UPDATE: President Obama has [...]

Consequences.

Backstory.

President Obama will be cutting funding for ineffective abstinence-only education. It’s a hell of a boondoggle, supported mostly by the same conservatives who bitch and moan about government spending of course. Abstinence only is a silly way to try and prevent teen pregnancies and STDs, we should be smarter about this issue.

Civil rights advance under President Obama.
President Obama on Wednesday signed a law that makes it a federal crime to assault an individual because of his or her sexual orientation or gender identity.
The expanded federal hate crimes law was added to a $680 billion defense authorization bill that Obama signed at a packed White House ceremony.
The [...]

Sometimes we need things like this to remind us that even with all the drama a Democratic congress is far preferable to a Republican one thanks to this sort of legislation:
The 68-to-29 vote sends the legislation to President Obama, who has said he supports it.
The measure, attached to an essential military-spending bill, broadens the definition [...]

Weird.

This is messed up.
The unprecedented number of death threats against President Obama, a rise in racist hate groups, and a new wave of antigovernment fervor threaten to overwhelm the US Secret Service, according to government officials and reports, raising new questions about the 144-year-old agency’s overall mission.
The Secret Service is tracking a far broader range [...]

Kooks on the march
Launched in March by Las Vegan Stewart Rhodes, Oath Keepers bills itself as a nonpartisan group of current and retired law enforcement and military personnel who vow to fulfill their oaths to the Constitution.
More specifically, the group’s members, which number in the thousands, pledge to disobey orders they deem unlawful, including directives [...]

Another boost to a more modern policy in the middle east…
The White House is placing a major vote of confidence in J Street, the left-leaning Jewish group whose conference later this month has become the focus of a battle over the group’s place in American Middle East politics.
National Security Adviser Jim Jones will be the [...]

Of course the DLC, the supreme losers on the Democratic side of things, are in favor of ditching the public option. Any time something might cause friction with the Republicans, the DLC solution is to capitulate. The DLC should just get on with it and say: From the people who brought you Republican majorities in [...]

Truth comes from the mouth of a child.

Conservatives are now very upset that the NFL has rejected their very racist ideological leader, Rush Limbaugh. So now expect to see some attacks on that most American of institutions, the NFL. Because anything that does not march in lockstep with their ideological rigidity and knee-jerk hatred of the “other” is something they must attack, [...]

As a friend noted, its like I was writing on Booman Tribune about progressive blogs whacking President Obama.

Congrats to the President for this honor, another turn of the page from the failed warmongering failure of the last 8 years of U.S. foreign policy.

Score one for the speaker.