Join us for a quick tour of Saturday afternoon reading in case, like me, the weather is keeping you inside the house. As always, these are just a quick taste and I invite you to click through the selection of links for some interesting views offered up by some great writers.
The Booman Tribune wonders if Obama is facing even more challenges because the Secret Service is full of racists.
Secret Service supervisors shared crude sexual jokes and engaged in racially derogatory banter about blacks, and passed around an anecdote about a possible assassination of the Rev. Jesse Jackson, according to internal e-mail disclosed in a federal court filing on Friday by lawyers for black Secret Service agents.
If the Obama candidacy has done nothing else, it has exposed the raw bigotry towards non-white Americans that lies just under a thin layer of civility to which many white Americans point when they claim that racism and racial prejudice are no longer significant problems in our society. of course any non-white American could tell you otherwise, while laughing at anyone so naive as to believe racism is fading away.
The Lady Logician is concerned that the Republican party could be facing an uphill climb this fall unless a change in the message is crafted.
As we head toward the Convention and subsequent state central meeting, we need to decide what we as a party need to do to prevent what has the potential to be a slaughter of epic proportions. All options should be on the table as this election is quite simply going to be the difference between having an overwhelming DFL majority for the next generation or a viable competitive Republican Party. It really is do or die time.
Chris Bowers at Open Left asks readers to ponder how remarkable it is that the Democratic Party – a collection of “freaks and geeks” – has bonded so many different groups into a formidable force in American politics.
Whatever its flaws, the Democratic Party really is the party for “everyone else” in America. Virtually every ethnic, religious and sexual minority votes for Democrats by overwhelming margins. Vulnerable economic groups, such as single women, union members, and low-income voters also break for Democrats by overwhelming margins.
Ed Morrissey at Hot Air takes the occasion of Jenna Bush’s wedding to ponder about media attitudes regarding such events and reminds us of some of the history of First Daughters walking down the aisle.
The idea that it takes “political capital” to stage a wedding for a child of the President is patently absurd. Who besides the most extreme lunatics would demand an end to someone’s wedding because their parent didn’t have political capital? Better yet, what credibility would Bush lose on policy after hosting a wedding reception for his daughter at the White House?
Avedon, at The Sideshow, thinks John McCain is way off base on how we should care for our veterans and has some news to share on the topic.
If you have some other favorite posts which we should all check out, use this as an open thread to point them out. I’ll add some of the good ones into this item later.