Post-racial

In the wake of the trouncing the Republicans took back on Nov. 4th, there have been a few silver lininings as Anh “Joseph” Cao won Louisiana’s 2nd Congressional District seat, defeating William “Cold Cash” Jefferson and retained the 4th Congressional Seat in western Louisiana as John Fleming squeaked past Democrat Paul Carmouche in elections that were delayed by Hurricane Gustav.

Cao represents the first Vietnamese-American in Congress, a fact you may not hear elsewhere. Cao came to the U.S. as a child after the fall of Saigon in 1975 and went on to earn degrees in philosophy, physics and law. That’s all?

Of course, the fact that Jefferson is under indictment charges for bribery, laundering and misusing his congressional office certainly helped (though, Jefferson was re-elected back in ’06 when these charges stood as well), the fact that this person of (a different) color won in a predominantly black and heavily Democratic district and in a region where political corruption is almost seen as a way of life, is remarkable.

Combine this victory with the Saxby Chambliss run-off victory in Georgia last week, which prevents a Democratic 60-seat majority, and you get a sense of the length of the Obama coattails when he’s on the ballot vs. when he’s not and which suggests there is still a pulse in the conservative Republican “brand”.

Louisiana is now home to a Indian-American Republican Governor in Bobby Jindal and a Vietnamese-American Republican congressman in Anh Cao. As we were saying, a few silver linings but few nonetheless.

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P.S. In linked article above, it gets to the 4th paragraph before mentioning Cao by name.

"This is why people move to South Pasadena"

It would appear that our old boss is in a little bit of trouble up in L.A. Former Navy admiral David Brewer is currently the superintendant of the L.A. Unified School District and is fighting for his $300,000/year job which includes a $45,000/year expense account. Yeah, not too shabby. Brewer recently survived an attempted coup earlier this month when the Board of Education failed to muster the necessary votes to oust him. A manuever that involved emergency meetings, a Raymond Chandler-like scene at Union Station and, of course, race.

Brewer had agreed earlier in the year to hand over day-to-day operations to retired Supt. Ramon C. Cortines so the taxpayers are continuing to foot Brewer’s salary and expense account to be merely a figure-head. But Brewer’s compensation package is not the problem, it's merely the symptom of a larger problem in the LAUSD. The articles linked to reminded us of the reason.tv spot (H/T: KT) that detailed the plight of Locke High School and the battle over whether to keep Locke in its deplorable state of non-achievement or hand it over to the non-profit Green Dot Public Schools who would operate it as a charter school.



What struck us while watching this was the teachers’ union’s complete disregard for the welfare of the children and the naked aggression displayed for preservation of a rotten status quo. The school board did indeed vote to give Green Dot a crack at running Locke as five separate schools starting with this school year.

We’re bringing all this up as more or less a reminder of sorts. Just a reminder of how broken the system is and how education seems to be merely a political football to our friends in Sacramento to be tossed about whenever budget cuts are threatened.

And as for the myriad of articles espousing ideas and opinions as to what the Republican party needs to do to “fix” itself and what they need to do to reach out to blacks and latinos, how about starting with education and specifically with strong support for school choice, vouchers and charter schools?

We’ve been banging on this drum for years and the Republicans continue to squander a golden opportunity to make their case to inner-city minorities that they do indeed have their and their children’s best interests at heart.

Ready, Fire, Aim Pt. III

Ya know, that debt is laying around here somewhere.

B-Daddy at The Liberator Today explains why it is that despite the best efforts and good intentions of Fed chief, Ben Bernanke, the magic wand-waving just won’t work.

Picture of the Day

Davis thinking: "I remember seeing this guy somewhere before.... wonder if the kid can play press coverage"



Given the pathetic state of the Raider organization, currently, this picture is not nearly as ridiculous as it would appear.

Tequila Club

We think we may be the only person(s) on the face of the planet that does not have their “bad Tequila story” - the story, usually from college and/or early 20s that swears people off the nectar of the agave forever.

So, because we lack this narrative, our participation in the first-Saturday-of-the-month, Tequila club at a local Mexican restaurant, is not fraught with the usual peril.

Six small samples from (usually) 2 tequilarias that are divided into Blancos, Reposados and Anejos.

And last month’s winner: the Frida Kahlo Blanco.

Here’s what we wrote on our scorecard: “Wow. Full body. Huge bouquet for a blanco”.

Its that sort of highly technical language that we constantly strive for in order to most completely describe this 1 ounce experience.

We are not usually fans of Blancos (the youngest of the 3 categories) as its youth tends to give it an overly-peppery tone that the more-aged Reps and Anejos have been allowed to mellow. But this particular one was outstanding and brought home the prize against the other unremarkable Trago tequilas.

We’ll report back later on this afternoon’s tasting.

So, it's come to this...

More than 200 Trinity College students, faculty and staff rallied on campus Monday in response to a racially offensive comment posted on an online message board.

"Something negative happened and we want to turn it into something positive," said Ibrahim Diallo, one of the students who organized the rally. Organizers said they hoped to start a discussion and make it clear that people did not agree with the posting.

The comment, posted anonymously on a website called TrinTalk, disparaged minority students and said their admission to the college correlated with a drop in the rankings of "our fine Trinity." TrinTalk is not affiliated with the college.

Waiting, waiting, waiting…. Ker-plunk…

On Friday, Oct. 31, Lynda Ikejimba '09 announced that she was responsible for the racist TrinTalk.com post that incited a series of events, including last week's student-initiated rally, "Stand in Solidarity," which received coverage in The Hartford Courant.

"I am the person responsible for the outrageous, despicably racist post published on the TrinTalk website," wrote Ikejimba in a campus-wide apology email. "And I am a black woman. I am writing to apologize to all of you for what I have caused."

Two things - One: A 200 person rally in response to a single comment left on an online message board? What's next: 4 people held a rally at Beers with Demo world headquarters over the weekend in response to a completely unrelated, non-sequitor comment left on a post devoted to controllable pitch propellers.

And: What does it say about the nature of race relation in this country in 2008 when the majority of these alleged hate crimes and instances of hate speech turn out to be hoaxes? That the perpetrators claim they are trying to raise awareness belies the reality that awareness has risen… it has risen, indeed!

And to think that all that diversity training may have paid off, afterall.

H/T: The Volokh Conspiracy

Quote of the Day

“At a time of great crisis with mortgage foreclosures and autos, he says we only have one president at a time. I'm afraid that overstates the number of presidents we have. He's got to remedy that situation.”

(emphasis ours)

That from "Brothel" Barney Frank (D-Mass.) on President-elect Obama’s prudent decision to resist the desires of his ardent admirers both in the press and on Capitol Hill and remain President-elect until later on next month.

Yeah, Barney’s one of the most odious members of Congress but good smack is good smack and we wanted to reach out across the aisle to recognize this instance of sly oratorical brilliance.

Ready, Fire, Aim Pt.II

The new General Accountability Office report on the Treasury Department's administration of its $700 billion financial-industry rescue plan is long on broad assertions and short on detailed information.

But the document does provide specifics on the amount of money that certain contractors have received, or stand to receive, through the program.

According to the report, the two law firms assisting the Treasury Department with its capital investments in banks and other financial institutions were paid nearly $2.8 million for their first four weeks of work.

The Treasury Department said last month that its contracts with Hughes, Hubbard & Reed LLP of New York and Squire, Sanders & Dempsey LLP of Cleveland would be worth $5.5 million per firm for their initial six-month term.

Nice to see all walks of profession are getting their turn at the trough.

Read more here at Bailout Sleuth

So when Bush leaves office, will it be possible to blame everything on the BCS?

Against all our desires and wishes, the BCS might just work out this year. Here’s this week’s rankings:

1. Alabama .9713
2. Oklahoma .9351
3. Texas .9223
4. Florida .8851
5. USC .8076
6. Utah .7844
7. Texas Tech .7805
8. Penn St. .7373
9. Boise St. .7034
10. Ohio State .6340


We have no complaints with one of the contestants being the winner of the Alabama-Florida game in the SEC championship and the other being Oklahoma... if they beat Missouri in the Big 12 championship game or... Texas (or USC ?) if they don’t.

And if you’re putting up the tree and dreading who it is you have to shop for as “Secret Santa” then its time to start the annual pondering of whether or not Pete Carroll is going to stay at SC or return to the meat grinder that is the NFL. Pete says he’s staying but also says he is getting tired of the same old – same old with respect to the BCS as his one-loss Trojan team will be getting shut out of the BCS title game at the hands of at least one other one-loss team and two if Florida beats Alabama. Hey, Pete, we feel for you, man, but if you take care of business in-conference against teams you know you should beat then the BCS, for all its flaws, will take care of you.

In this year’s renewal of the City championship, USC and UCLA are going to revive a tradition that has been dormant since 1982: both teams will wear their home jerseys which means USC as the visiting team at the Rose Bowl will be penalized a timeout at the beginning of the game for donning their cardinal tops opposite the Bruins in the powder blue. In a slight twist, Rick Neuheisel, the Bruin head coach has agreed to take a timeout immediately after USC is assessed their penalty timeout in a sportman-like show of competitive goodwill. We’re laying 12-1 odds that Slick Rick reneges on his agreement and doesn’t call that timeout… and who's not rooting for that to happen?

We like the idea that the fellas at AOL Fanhouse have for the renaming of the Heisman Trophy. Call it the “Weis” whereby the hardware is crane-lifted to “the player who's on television and talked about the most without great attention to his actual level of ability.” We’re not sure when the trend of picking the quarterback or running back of a top 5 team began but it did appear to kick into high gear back in ’92 and we’re still waiting for Gino Torretta to give Marshall back his Heisman.

And speaking of big Charlie, the Notre Dame brass decided that his 6-6 record and four-year 28-21 record (19 of those which were amassed in his first two years with his predecessor’s players) was good enough for the most storied collegiate football program in America and will be retaining his services. Said predecessor, Ty Willingham was axed after his third year and a 6-5 record and Coaches Hot Seat is suggesting that there are some double-standards at work here and we won’t argue with them. Hey, it’s Notre Dame and piling-on gives us such unbridled joy.

And finally...We always hear how wonderful football is in the South and how passionate the fans are and how committed the universities are to the success of their respective football teams. Yeah, we get it. Those people are also completely unreasonable. Witness the firing of Auburn’s Tommy Tuberville and his 85-40 record in ten years on the Plains, yesterday. What’s that…? He resigned? Oh… well, you people down there are still insane and a tad creepy.

Pax.

...but once a year.

We mentioned it before, but we just ain’t feelin’ it this year. No tree and no lights thus far - all the Christmas and New Year’s joyfulness and cheer has yet to find its way to our front door. Maybe it was this historic election or perhaps this unprecedented (in our lifetime) economic crisis or maybe even some health issues within our family has given us pause and cast the Holiday season in a different light.

And maybe because of all (or none of) that we approach the season with a greater inward appreciation of the “true meaning of Christmas”. But to be honest… all this introspection really stinks. So, if any of you have any ideas to snap us out of this funk and get us back to our normal red, white and blue hyper-consuming and gluttonous Christmas ways, please…. please… drop those in the suggestion box. Thanks.

This ought to restore your faith in politics

Not to go all 10th grade on everybody but before you take your civics exam here, know that you most likely will fare better than your average elected official. Not that that’s any great shakes as the average score for the exam is 49% for the respondents who have never held public office vs. 44% for those who have.

We scored a 94% (31/33). We botched one question we really should’ve known but as Bill Parcells says, “You are what your record says you are.”

We fully expect to see sterling scores from at least two or three of you out there and you know who you are.

H/T: Information Dissemination