Friday, July 17, 2009

Crazy Uncle Pat

For some reason MSNBC feels the need to keep Pat Buchanan around as a political analyst. When he is on he is usually the curmudgeony old uncle that the rest of the people have to shake their heads at times but for the most part get along with. However since the rise of Obama and his recent selection of Sotomayor as his Supreme Court nominee we have seen the darker side of Uncle Pat come out more. You know the family member that is fine until they get that third or fourth scotch in them and feel more free to tell you exactly what is on their mind. Buchanan has been on a tirade every since the Sotomayor pick has been announced.

Rachel Maddow got into a fierce discussion with him on her show Thursday night. Pat seemed to wax nostalgically about the good ole days in 1960 when the country was 90% white and 10% black and everything thing was just dandy. Since that time the Uncle Pats of the world have watched in horror as the power base of the country become more diverse, but to him it is not because the various minority groups deserved anything but that they used affirmative action to take things from deserving white people. Like his fellow cable talking heads Lou Dobbs and Sean Hannity Buchanan only seems to see discrimination against the poor oppressed white man. In a piece he wrote for Human Events magazine Buchanan not only says that Sotomayor is a an affirmative action pick and deserves no respect from the Republicans on the committee. Of the thousands of cases Sotomayor has been a part of Uncle Pat and the Republican Senators only noticed the case where the white men lost out. In the same article also takes a broader view on race and says the Republican party on the whole should not worry about the Hispanic vote. That John McCain simply did not win enough of the white vote. This is a stunningly myopic and short sighted view of things, and while he may be right to a degree about the math in 2008 it will become harder and harder for Republicans to win with just white people especially in states like Florida, Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. Heck even W saw that the GOP needed in the Hispanic vote in the future, but lost out when the hard liners won on immigration.

Buchanan and Maddow have been oddly tied together on MSNBC. According to Rachel it was his fire and brimstone speech at the 1992 Republican Convention that got her interested in politics in the first place. Before she got her own show Pat and Rachel were often put together on panel discussions and had several dust ups during the 2008 primaries. My favorite moment is when on panel with Rachel, Norah O' Donnell and Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post that the various movements and radical actions of the sixties accomplished nothing only to have Maddow point out that he was on a panel with with two women and a black man. Then again unlike somebody Chris Matthews, Maddow has no problem strongly disagreeing with Buchanan. When her show first started Rachel had Pat on several times but has not had him on as much recently. It was largely because of his piece in Human Events magazine that motivated her to have him saying she wanted to hear his side.

I started out with for some reason MSNBC continues to have Buchanan on the various shows. I think most people at MSNBC like Pat on a personal level and for the most part appears to be a nice guy. It is just at time likes this when that nasty racist bully streak comes out you wonder is really worth it to keep him around much longer.

Thursday, July 16, 2009

What's Been Going On

Now, we all know what can happen if you blog about your job. You can get fired or Dooced.

So, I am not going to do that. I will tell you that I have survived the first four days of working as a temp, even though my new bosses are requiring that I come in at 7:30 in the morning. If you know me well, you will know exactly how hard that is for me. So far all is good, and I am looking forward to going back next week.

Tomorrow, Glen and I are heading to Birmingham for the weekend. Some of Glen's friends from college are having a mini-reunion of sorts, and so we are heading down for that. I think it is always fun to meet people who knew your significant other before you met, and I look forward to hearing some new stories about Glen.

I turned in this quarter's disclosure this week. It was a very good quarter, and I hope we will build on it.

The wedding plans are picking up steam. We have a date and a location. We know that we are going to have cupcakes instead of a wedding cake. We also talked to a friend about making something special for the wedding. We will be making a lot more decisions over the next few months, which is exciting to think about.

In an awesome turn of events, my brother got engaged recently, and so I think it will be fun to compare notes and see the differences in our styles.

Everyone have a good weekend, and I will see you on the flip side.