16 September 2009 (am)

Workout notes 2000 yard swim; 5 x 200 warm up (on the 4; last few were 3:25-26), drills, 5 x (50 fly, 50 paddle) to finish it up.

Later: I hope to do some gentle walking and stretching.

Politics
Will Bunch has an interesting post here. Basically he points out that the right wing has resorted to racist attacks. Sure, they manage to get away with it by, say, cherry picking what they chose to post:

Drift back to the center for a series of increasingly hysterical headlines about the ACORN scandal, which involves a few rotten employees of a community organizing group (Obama was a community organizer, remember?) caught giving tax-cheating scam advice — did I mention the ACORN workers were predominantly black? Do you remember all the fuss in the right-wing media about million-dollar, white collar tax-cheating advice-givers at banks like UBS? Me neither.) Clearly, today’s Drudge Report is a narrative, and that narrative is all about race, and a social fabric that Drudge and his readers are convinced (based, of course, on a series of scare headlines) is coming apart.

Think I’m a little paranoid? I still probably wouldn’t be reading about this if I hadn’t spent a little time in the car this afternoon, enough time for Rush Limbaugh, the de facto leader of the Republican Party who has worked tirelessly to infuse race into discussions about Obama, playing tag team with Drudge, as he so often does. As I started the engine, the radio host and his caller were prattling on about the all-important school bus assault, and Limbaugh said the story is a perfect illustration of what he called “Obama’s America.”

That alone would be beyond outrageous, the allegation that the mere presence of a black president — who just last week spoke to students urging them to study and act responsibly — is encouraging kids to fight on a school bus. But that was just a small part of Limbaugh’s show today, which was all about race. He harped on a Newsweek article that he claims shows that racism is pre-determined (just as liberals always argue that homosexuality is pre-determined, don’t you see…so…I guess racism is OK, after all — all-righty, then), and of course the massive left-wing conspiracy that is ACORN, the corn-rowed people who are the real ones trying to rob the middle class, and not the Wall Street types who so rarely get even a mild rebuke from Limbaugh, except when they vote for Obama. I thought he was done — but then Limbaugh said “remember how I asked earlier today if Obama’s brother is still in the hut” (not making this up) and read all of a lengthy article about Obama’s relatives in Kenya.

Some examples:

(see, this is President Obama’s fault)

Contrast Limbaugh’s comments with this post from a fellow blogger.

Contrast the two responses: one response is intended to provoke thought. The other response is intended to provoke hate.

Advertisement