Motley Moose – Archive

  Make sure you let your peeps

  know where to find you!  

Good morning meese! Happy Wednesday!

The common Moose, Alces alces, unlike other members of the deer family, is a solitary animal that doesn’t form herds. Not so its rarer but nearest relative, Alces purplius, the Motley Moose. Though sometimes solitary, the Motley Moose herds in ever shifting groups at the local watering hole to exchange news and just pass the time.

A Moose in my neck of the woods right now would look like this:

It seems that what passes for conventional wisdom has pretty much written off the stormy, incandescent career of the junior senator from Texas, “Tailgunner” Ted Cruz. The “tactical error” of bringing the country to the brink of default earned him the disapprobation of his party and enough condemnation by our collective thought leaders that we seem to have dismissed him from further consideration as a figure of national significance and appeal. And the sigh of relief and hopeful finality attending this dismissal is notably one of the few truly bipartisan undertakings of our otherwise sharply polarised politics and conflicted media commentary.

But let’s set aside, for the moment, the convenient notion that we have survived this political asteroid. His meteoric career impacted squarely on the fault line dividing the modern Republican party at a crucial moment. Is this accidental?

Just as the leadership prepared to abandon the single, defining policy issue which had been used to demonise the administration and whip support for almost four years, Cruz weighs in and makes a perfect riot out of what the party was hoping to quietly concede.  In the process he wins a Gungam style volume of earned media, unimpeachable ‘outsider’ status in spite of having trod the corridors of power in Washington for a decade and a distant fourth in the history of filibusters.

He has also captured the unswerving loyalty of a significant cohort of disgruntled, activist Republicans who were the true believers. Sorry, folks, but this is no accident, it is the calculated, if somewhat volatile, opening gambit of a presidential nomination campaign.

I make no secret about being a fan of Jay Smooth’s. I regularly use his video commentaries about race and other social justice issues in the classroom.  

“Jay Smooth” is the deejay moniker of John Randolph, who founded and hosts New York City’s longest running hip-hop radio program “Underground Railroad” on Pacifica Radio station WBAI-FM. He’s a blogger at hiphopmusic.com, and Ill Doctrine, and probably best known for his widely distributed video commentary “How To Tell Someone They Sound Racist”

I’m always looking for new tools to use to encourage thoughtful discussion about race, racism and racial relations, and browsing Jay Smooth alerted me to the report issued this year by Race Forward: The Center for Racial Justice Innovation , entitled “Moving the Race Conversation Forward” which is something I recommend you read and pass on to others if you haven’t read it already.

  Make sure you let your peeps

  know where to find you!  

Yes, it is that time again (No, NOT Howdy Doody Time). Time to deal with the animal known as Monday…

I post a weekly diary of historical notes, arts & science items, foreign news (often receiving little notice in the US) and whimsical pieces from the outside world that I often feature in “Cheers & Jeers”.

OK, you’ve been warned – here is this week’s tomfoolery material that I posted.

Three people are reported dead after a shooting at a Jewish Community Center and the Village Shalom retirement village in Overland Park, Kansas.  It is reported that police took a man into custody who was screaming “Heil Hitler” at reporters.  The Forward reports that the gunman “reportedly shouted Nazi slogans.”

This shooting occurred a day before Passover begins tomorrow night at sundown.  If the reports from The Forward are correct, then this represents an anti-Semitic murder as preparations for that upcoming holiday are well underway.

  Make sure you let your peeps

  know where to find you!  

The President’s Weekly Address post is also the Weekend Open News Thread. Feel free to share other news stories in the comments.

From the White House – Weekly Address

In this week’s address, the President underscores the importance of ensuring equal pay for equal work and highlights the steps his Administration has taken to expand opportunity and narrow the pay gap that exists between men and women.