Short discussion of the Williams firing by NPR

Sen. Jim DeMint, the conservative and increasingly powerful Republican senator from South Carolina, introduced a bill Friday to strip federal funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) in the wake of National Public Radio’s decision to fire Juan Williams for comments about Muslims that he made on Fox News earlier this week.

Seizing the occasion of NPR firing Juan — but I’m so perfect to fill that slot on Fox All Stars — Williams, the entire Republican Wurlitzer is calling on Congress to defund the evil NPR, and while they’re at it, why not just take out the last vestiges of public funding for public radio and television, the perceived bastion of liberal –by which they mean rational, non-Christian– journalism.

Sometimes it worthwhile to examine the language we use and what it really means. English, as it is spoken in the United States, is wonderfully malleable and thus common words can be open to interpretation. However there are some words that should be clear in their meaning, bigotry being one.

My parents were Liberals with a capital L. They both came from places and times when the N word could be used and nothing would be thought of it. This was anathema to them, and they were not going to pass this kind of thing down to their children. The rule in our house was that you could hate someone, but you could only do it if you knew them personally and they had done you wrong. There would be no painting with a broad brush, no assumptions put on one person because of the actions of another person like them.

Bigotry is doing exactly that, assuming that there is a monolithic set of actions or attribute to a large group of people. It does not matter if the set is wrapped around sexuality or religion or ethnicity, if you assume that all of group X does action Y because one or some of them does action Y then you are bigoted in your opinion.

NPR finally wakes up and shitcans Juan Williams.

Buying Debt? Sounds Oxymoronic initially. The Central Bank has switched gears in an attempt to quell the poor economic times we are currently facing

The well killed, it’s time to scrub our memories. And it appears to be working.

NPR reports that Massey had Methane detector disabled

This story on Judge Martin Feldman’s overturning of the Obama offsfore drilling ban aired today on NPR’s "All Things Considered." The speakers are NPR reporter Robert Smith, Kate Gordon of the "liberal" think tank Center for American Progress, and Tulane law professor Ed Sherman. Smith:  Judge Feldman gave the oil industry everything it wanted in the lawsuit. [...]

NPR “On Point”‘s Tom Ashbrooke recently interviewed Rashuram Rajan from the University of Chicago regarding US unemployment. Rajan gives the new neoliberal pitch on the economy and the future of employment.